


Exeunt, Pursued By Heteronormativity

by psocoptera



Series: Road & Romance [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Mild Voyeurism, Multi, OT4, Relationship Negotiation, Road Trips, Slow Build, Tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:43:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shitty Knight takes a post-graduation road trip.  Four friends, six thousand miles, two tents, several embarrassing photos, a giant rabbit, three cops, and a bear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With Pie and Mixed Drinks

**Author's Note:**

> This story is long, slow, and rambling. It is, however, completely written; I'll post chapters as I edit them, which I expect to go quickly. Completed length is about 35000 words if you're trying to decide whether this is a trip you'd like to take. ::grin:: (I... have a lot to say about these guys?)
> 
> This goes AU from the Twitter some time around early April, although not in any hugely dramatic way as of posting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: brief mention of the aftermath of a sexual assault of an unnamed character; drug use (marijuana).

*

"I 100% believe we tell our own stories," Shitty tells Jack earnestly. He gestures and his Solo cup sloshes a little. He's eighteen, and already half-schwasted; Jack is 21 and quiet and Shitty can't tell if he's more like humoring him or actually listening.

"He fucking told me it was _evolution_ , like some lizard crawled out of the sea and that made him born to be an asshole. _Fuck_ that shit, you know? I don't have to be the lizard in my brain."

Jack nods a little. "You want to be better."

"Fucking right," Shitty nods back, "I can be whoever the fuck I want to be. Wait, shit, is it weaksauce for me to complain to you about my dad?"

*

Shitty meets Larissa Duan when he's nineteen, before classes have even started. The dorms aren't open yet to returning students, but Shitty can get into the Haus and he's sick of being at home and Jack is coming back early too. His first sight of Larissa is like a punch to the nuts. Literally: he's busy talking to Jack and doesn't realize that they've walked into a soccer game until the ball slams into him.

Shitty's taken some hard checks, but JESUS; he's not sure if he's going to scream or throw up. He folds over onto the grass.

"Oops," he hears. He looks up. There's a girl standing there with her hands on her hips; she doesn't look the least bit sorry.

"Entirely... my... fault." Shitty gets out.

She sticks out her hand and pulls him up to his feet. She's strong, for someone who comes up to his armpit. He can see the little curves of biceps in her arms, and the little curves of her tits under her tank top.

She raises her eyebrows and tosses her ponytail a little; Shitty realizes he's staring.

"Shitty," he says. "I mean, uh, that's me."

She smirks at him, but it's friendly. "Cool," she says, "I should, uh." She points back at the handful of other frogs kicking the ball back and forth.

"Of course," Shitty says. "I was, uh." He points at Jack.

"See you around," she grins, and runs back into the game. Shitty is a little tempted to stay and watch, but that would probably be creepy.

"Did you even get her name?" Jack asks.

Shitty shakes his head. "It's her Orientation Week," he says, "We're not even supposed to be here, I don't wanna - I don't know." He twists a little, to look back over his shoulder at the running, laughing frogs, then makes a face at Jack. "You should talk, it's not like you ever hook up."

"Well," Jack says, visibly taking a breath, "I'm - "

*

The first kegster after Larissa's signed on as manager: by the time the sixth person has asked her which guy on the team she's dating, she's losing her shit.

"All of them," she snaps, "I just lie back with my legs open and they line up, bam, bam, bam, _is that what you wanted to know_."

"Jeez," the girl mutters, one of the seniors' girlfriends, Shitty thinks, "Just trying to be friendly, whatever."

Shitty wants to punch someone in the fucking face. Possibly himself, for his ludicrous, possessive, inappropriate rage.

"C'mon," he says instead, "Let's go find Jack, he's probably hiding from fun somewhere."

*

The kegster after that, he and Lardo have to help a very drunk, very sobbing girl decide whether she's going to to her room, to campus health, or to the ER.

"Campus health won't do a kit," Lardo is saying evenly, "But they can send a peer volunteer with you if you want to go. They're nice girls," and, christ, Lardo's a first-semester frog, why does she have to know this? "My RA volunteers," Lardo adds, petting the crying girl's shoulders, and Shitty has to look away, he's so relieved that's how she knows.

He lures the whole team back to the Haus the next day with false promises of more alcohol and screams at them for ten minutes about affirmative consent and what will never, never happen in his Haus. (He'll realize later it's the first time he says "my Haus" like that.) He doesn't know if it was one of them or not, isn't sure whether he wants to know. Jack stands up at the end and says, flatly, "I'll get you thrown off the team." It's not his Captain's voice; maybe it's his you-know-who-I-am voice, that Shitty's never heard before. Shitty doesn't even care that seven words from Jack have more guys looking wary than minutes of his best invective; he watches Lardo hug Jack and, for once, isn't jealous at all.

*

Jack doesn't smoke up, but he doesn't mind being around it, actually seems more comfortable sitting with Shitty and Lardo on the porch, watching them pass a joint back and forth, than he does when every hand holds a red cup. He grins when Lardo tries to braid Shitty's hair, when she insists he return the favor so that they can match. Shitty's not much of a braider but her hair is like fucking silk in his hands. Everything seems very important; Lardo's fingers on his scalp were as intense as - like, as, they were like, he felt like he was being poured with honey or something.

"It's too bad your hair is so short or we could be triiiiplets," Lardo tells Jack, and she and Shitty each end up snuggled on one of his shoulders, sneaking looks at each other and giggling.

*

Fucking Kenya.

Shitty is a supportive friend and it's an amazing opportunity. He rereads the wikipedia page about Nairobi on a weekly basis and sends her messages about Jack and the team and their new, adorable, pie-obsessed frog.

*

"OHHH yeah," Shitty hollers, stretching out his arms and tipping his face up to the sun. "Leeeet the sun shine! Hello blackbird, helloooo motherfucking starling!"

"It's forty," Lardo says flatly. She's bundled up in her puffy jacket and earmuffs same as she's been all winter. Bitty, beside her, is similarly wrapped up. Shitty, come down to the front of the Haus to meet them, has put on boxer briefs as a concession to indecent exposure laws.

"It's beautiful," Shitty corrects.

"It's _still winter_ ," Lardo says, "Look around, the snow is _not gone_ ," but she's laughing while she says it.

On impulse, Shitty takes their hands and drags them into a raggedly-spinning circle. He's gratified by the way Bitty grabs Lardo's other hand and gives weight. Shitty's tempted to sing, but the song they're quoting rhymes "starling" with "be my darling", so, better not. He spins them until he has to admit his bare feet are going numb on the cold ground.

*

"I know what you need," Shitty finger-guns at Jack, and Jack looks at him a little narrow-eyed and says "For you to wear pants in my bed?"

Shitty ignores this, as he does 90% of Jack's submission to the cultural hegemony of pants. "You need something to look forward to after playoffs."

"Like that contract I just signed?"

"Nooo," Shitty says, rolling his eyes. "Not the inexorable march of our carefree youth into our adult lives, something distracting. We should plan a road trip!"

"We have a five hour bus ride tomorrow," Jack points out, but Shitty rolls out of his bed and ambles down the stairs in hopes of thinking pie. He's in luck; there's a third of a butterscotch tart left out on the counter. He cuts himself a generous piece and sits down at the kitchen table with it.

The sweetness of the butterscotch melts into his mouth.

Shitty knows it would not be cool to, like, seduce and marry Bitty just so he'll keep making him pie, but seriously, how is he going to fucking get through law school without the security of pie on the counter. Sometimes he takes a bite and he can actually hear all the buzzing in his head just stop for a second, like it does for the bump of Lardo's fist or the clatter of sticks on ice.

Pie doesn't make the road trip idea sound worse. Shitty knows he feels shaky thinking about graduation, about having to pack his stuff up and hand over his room to Nursey. Jack might be moving on to the next hockey but he's still leaving Samwell, Shitty won't believe that's not hitting him. Shitty doesn't have a lot of illusions about how often he's going to see Jack in the future. Going somewhere, doing something, one last time together that isn't about hockey at all... Shitty thinks it might be nice for both of them to have that.

He blinks against the sudden glare as Bitty comes into the kitchen and flips on the light.

"Ugh, can't sleep," Bitty moans gently, dropping into the other chair and burying his face in his arms. "Why are playoffs."

"Playoffs are a gift from the gods to try us," Shitty tells him seriously. "Either that or, you know, post-World-War-Two college attendance spurring an interest in varsity sports. Pie?"

"Too much sugar," Bitty says sadly. His hair is shaggy and going every which way; Shitty leans over and pats his hand on the back of Bitty's head. Bitty twitches a little but doesn't throw him off.

"Should I kidnap Jack after graduation?" Shitty asks. "I just - maybe it would be easier to not be here if we went somewhere else. New Orleans, Las Vegas, I don't know. Get our kicks on Route 66."

Bitty looks up under Shitty's hand, making him look vaguely like he's wearing a very silly hat.

"I reject the concept of post-graduation plans," Bitty says grumpily, so Shitty has to pet him until he sighs. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's a good idea, y'all should do it. Get that boy some fresh air. Maybe not Vegas though?"

He's not quite meeting Shitty's eyes. Shitty tries not to impose his own hypothetical narratives onto the reality of other people's actions, so he focuses on filing that under "Bitty is sometimes protective of Jack in ways and directions that Shitty doesn't think to be and that's good".

"Sure," Shitty says easily, "Less Fear and Loathing, more... what."

"Hopefully not Thelma and Louise," Bitty mumbles. He's getting sleepy under Shitty's petting. Man, that's the best. Shitty gives him a last little scritch and sends him up to bed. He'll go back to his own bed soon. He just wants a quick look at some maps.

*

Playoffs turn out to be the tip of a vast relentless breaking wave of lastness - the last game, the last walk to Faber, the last rubbery cheese cubes at the last stupid Wednesday talk in the Poly Sci department. The forsythia and azaleas turn the campus yellow and magenta and it scrapes at Shitty's eyeballs and his insides. The dining hall can't serve fucking fish things bar without Shitty wondering if it'll be the last fish things bar. He can't smoke with Lardo any more, he's too scared what he might say.

He kind of wants to punch himself in the dick, except Shitty is a self-aware guy who believes that the culture of masculine emotional repression serves the kyriarchy. So he just has to live with these feelings and all their related difficult facts. Jack seems half-gone already, keeping to his own room, sometimes fleeing in the middle of conversations. Shitty brings him slices of pie and drapes himself over Jack's back, sticks his feet on his lap, flops down next to him in his bed. It's always been part of his deal with Jack that Shitty doesn't pry, doesn't demand words or try to put any in Jack's mouth for him. Usually Shitty talks to fill Jack's silences but sometimes now he finds himself just joining them. He doesn't know where to start with the hopeless tangle that is campus and hockey and Lardo and the Haus, and Shitty himself a cut piece of string being slowly pulled free of all those knots.

Bitty, increasingly, is the voice of the Haus, the one who tells everyone what it's time to do, when Shitty is off with Jack. That's maybe Shitty's favorite thing in all this endingness, the way Bitty's redrawn himself a little bigger, a little surer. That and that Lardo is still around, that Lardo hasn't taken the excuse of hockey being over to melt out of Shitty's life like the last, filthy crusts of snow.

*

One night there are three subtly different kinds of key lime pie; Bitty claims to want feedback, but nobody's really paying attention to which one they're eating. There is also tequila, being mixed with Sprite, for reasons that Shitty thinks more or less boil down to "lime" and "we're in college".

The frogs are having some sort of argument about what superpowers would be best for hockey. Superspeed, obviously, but Nursey likes the idea of not being able to get hurt like Wolverine, and Chowder's arguing for prescience "because then no one would even know you were _using_ it."

"That's cheating," Holster butts in, "I'd rather play good hockey and have a completely different superpower." He thinks for a minute. "Like Wasp, get giant, get tiny, that would be fun."

"Like you're not giant enough already," Ransom mutters. "No, look, I've thought about this, you get the best utility from touch healing, if you take it seriously." 

Holster fist-bumps him. "Shitty wants mind control," he guesses.

"Fuck you I do not!" Shitty says, sitting up from his sprawl on the couch and almost knocking Lardo off the arm. "Ew. I wanna be Elastigirl."

"Ooh, stretchy," she says, waggling her eyebrows. He feels it sweet in his stomach like the pie. "I guess I want to be Superman, if I had the super strength and flight and the heat vision for welding I could make, like, giant mile-high sculptures."

"Why not just be Magneto?" Chowder asks, "And just - ". He puts his hands up in a "manipulating metal" gesture.

"Magneto's a douche, Supes is the man," Lardo says lazily. Shitty pictures her flying around in Supergirl's costume and has to gulp Sprite tequila.

Bitty comes out of the kitchen just then, carrying a fourth key lime pie.

"Bitty!" everyone says. "Imagine if you could just instantly materialize pies, like, anywhere," Ransom says.

Bitty shakes his head. "Oh, my goodness, no. I like to bake. Are we talking about superpowers? I always wished I could teleport, bamf and go. I've never been anywhere."

"I want to photosynthesize," Dex puts in dreamily, "Just, you know, drink sunshine." 

"You've been drinking something," Bitty says fondly, and, _oh_ , Shitty is hit by the worst wave of love for these guys. Law school will never be like this. He'll have some tiny apartment and he'll be up all night reading cases with Jack's games on in the background. He shifts so he can put his head in Lardo's lap like he almost never lets himself do any more, and closes his eyes while she cards her fingers through his hair.

*

"I think we should take Bitty," Shitty tells Jack.

Jack looks blank. "Take him where?"

"On the road trip," Shitty explains. "He sounded so sad when he said he'd never been anywhere, and, I mean, it's fucking true, even when they drive up his mom makes them route around all major metropolitan areas to avoid city traffic."

"Are we going to any major metropolitan areas?" Jack asks. "I thought we were camping."

"We'll go through Chicago," Shitty shrugs, "Bits likes the Blackhawks. And I bet he'd do, like, campsite breakfast."

Jack frowns down at his hands, grabbing his own wrist. "Are you serious, you think we should take him?"

"Oh, hey, no," Shitty backpedals - curse Jack for being so hard to read these days - "This can be just us. I wasn't sure if it was a bros thing or a _bros_ thing, you know?" He's not entirely sure he knows what he means himself, but it gets Jack to lift his head, looking more focused than he has since the playoffs.

"No," Jack says, "If you want to take him, we can take him. It'll be okay."

Shitty doesn't even know where he would start the hypothetical narrative. "Okay," he echoes. Jack wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it.

*

Bitty's eyes go huge when Shitty asks him. "Gracious," he says. "Really?" Shitty handwaves through the plan, watching Bitty flush a little as he nods along.

"I need to get home in time for camp," Bitty says, chewing on his lower lip. "Jack is really okay with this?"

"We're going to miss you, Bits," Shitty answers, and Bitty says "Oh, I'm going to miss you guys _so much_ ," and Shitty has to start singing "Life Is A Highway" before he starts fucking crying or something, even though it makes Bitty cover his ears.

*

Shitty keeps hearing Lardo laugh, and so Jack is crushing him at Mario Kart.

Ransom and Holster and the frogs have already left for the annual Dregs party in East Dorm courtyard, but Lardo's been doing _something_ in Bitty's room for like the last half-hour. Shitty isn't going, despite it being his actual last college party. They'd had their last kegster the previous week, and it had been good, and Dregs was totally not Jack's scene, and Shitty does not actually need a last-chance hookup, thank you, so, time for best friend time. He just can't help but listen for Lardo.

Finally he hears footsteps on the stairs and puts down his controller, ready to make some kind of joke about seeing his kiddies off to the prom. But, JESUS. Lardo's wearing tiny cutoff shorts, and a cropped black tank top that doesn't reach the waistband, and Bitty's dressed _the exact same way_ , so arm-in-arm they're like some crazy androgynous two-headed spider consisting entirely of arms and legs and they're _tiny_ , they shouldn't even be able to have that much leg. Legs.

"Is that eyeliner," Jack says, sounding strangled, and Shitty tears his eyes away from Lardo long enough to notice that Bitty is, yup, rocking the cat eye. He's also pink in a way that shouts "pregaming" to Shitty's experienced eye, and his lips look red and wet. As do Lardo's. Jesus. Shitty had once, in one of the creepier moments of his creeper life, asked if he could try out her lip gloss. If this is the same one it tastes like strawberries.

"We're going to Dregs," Bitty says unnecessarily.

"Hhh - " Shitty starts. His mouth is desert dry. "Hunting seniors?"

Lardo shrugs a little. "Hunting fun," she says. "You guys want to change your minds?"

"No," Jack says curtly. He turns back to their abandoned game. "Shitty, you should go."

Shitty doesn't trust himself to stand up, let alone be a decent wingman. He's kind of wishing he had put his controller down in his lap for whatever camouflage it would provide.

"I - no," he says. "I don't need to kill my bottles or kiss my crushes."

Lardo rolls her eyes at the infamous Dregs slogan. "I guess tub juice doesn't leave leftovers," she says lightly. "Okay, boys. Happy shelling."

Bitty looks back over his shoulder as they leave, but he doesn't say anything.

"I'm going to bed," Jack announces as soon as they're gone, and vanishes. Fuck. Now it's just Shitty sitting here, thinking about Lardo and three hundred horny seniors looking for a last-chance fuck, and it's not like he hasn't been saying Bitty should get himself laid, but he didn't mean at _Dregs_ , christ. Fuck, are they planning to pick up _together_? Shitty went last year and remembers seeing a couple of more-than-two-person makeouts in the courtyard corners. It had seemed messy and weird to him at the time but it hadn't been _Lardo and Bitty_.

If they bring someone back to Bitty's room, Shitty is very possibly going to be able to _hear them_. He goes and gets his laptop and sits in the living room, poking idly at road trip research, nervously eating peach cobbler. Lardo isn't much of a dancer but he bets Bitty could drag her into it. They could be dancing up on either side of a lacrosse player _right now_.

Shitty prepares himself to be a good bro when they come back. Magnanimous. Silent. Possibly hiding in the kitchen. But Bitty comes back alone and smudgy-eyed and disinclined to talk, and Lardo doesn't come back at all.

*

"I invited Lardo," Jack tells him. They're in their caps and gowns and Shitty is milling around with Jack at the end of the line instead of staying in K where he's supposed to be.

"You what?" Shitty asks. "For dinner? She was in already, everyone is."

"On the road trip," Jack says. "I think four would be better than three." Shitty shoots him a sudden, suspicious glance - Jack smiles back innocently - and then some lady with a clipboard is shooing Shitty back up the line and fucking Pomp and Circumstance is playing and this is it, this is _it_.

Shitty had anticipated this being a fraught three-way moment of tension with his parents, who are separately in the audience, but he doesn't think to look for either of them; all he can think as they file down to their seats is that Lardo is coming on the road trip. Oh fuck.

*


	2. Shuffle Off To Buffalo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: brief mention of claustrophobia/fear of drowning.

*

The first morning is kind of a clusterfuck.

Shitty had thought that if they were driving the full length of I-90, they should really drive the _full length of I-90_ , and had made the case that it would hardly add any driving time to loop up through Boston instead of cutting straight up to the Pike. Everyone else had nodded - damn straight, Shitty was the cruise director of this little voyage - but the problem was, he had been tragically wrong. The highway south of Boston had been a mysterious parking lot the whole way up from the Prince symbol interchange, there had been a lane closed in the Ted Williams tunnel, and they'd had to drive around the entire fucking airport to get turned around to go back through it again. His E-ZPass is probably laughing at him. Plus it had taken an hour more than he'd figured to cram everyone's shit into the trunk of the Volvo. By the time they're hitting Newton where they'd be without the detour, it's lunch time and everyone is sitting in tooth-grinding, simmering silence.

Shitty pulls off at the first service plaza and steels his nerves like he's going over the boards.

"Should we just turn around?" he asks, once everyone has attempted to find something that meets their dietary needs at the Boston Market. "You guys are supposed to tell me when I have a stupid idea."

Bitty and Lardo, across the table, exchange glances.

"You could drop me off," Bitty offers. "I know I wasn't part of the original plan. And," he makes a face, "The singing, and you'd have much more room in the trunk without my boxes. I wouldn't mind, really. It would be better than - I know you've been looking forward to this."

"What?" is all Shitty can say. "No, Bits - I'm not gonna throw you over the side, what the fuck."

"Well, I appreciate that," Bitty says primly, "But you're talking about giving up, and we're half an hour from home, uh, from the Haus - "

"If you don't go the long way," Lardo mutters -

"And..." Bitty falters, looking down at the table. "Maybe this _wasn't_ the best idea."

"No," Jack says, setting down his fork. "We can do this."

Bitty makes one of those "oh, honey" faces. "It's a vacation, Jack, it's not game four - "

Jack flinches, then locks gazes with Bitty across the table. "We just have to try," he says, overemphasizing the words. "To - not get hung up on some idea about how it should go."

"Are you calling Shitty's itinerary a stupid fantasy?" There's a bitter twist in Bitty's voice.

"Stupid, never" Jack rumbles back. "But, yes, I think it'll be better if we just... drive the real road, whatever's on it."

"Should _I_ bail?" Lardo asks Shitty quietly, leaning forward like she's trying not to interrupt the conversation beside them. "I know Jack didn't ask you first, I - "

"I always want you here," Shitty says immediately, too fast to be anything but nakedly honest. He shuts his eyes so he's not staring at her like a crazy person. "Captain made a fine call."

He feels the quick knock of her knuckles against his on the table.

"Okay," she says more loudly, "Shitty's doing the route but I am now in charge of the music, the AC, and the seating arrangements. Potty breaks can be negotiated at least fifteen minutes in advance, and..."

*

Western MA is pretty, all trees and stretches where the highway cuts through stone. It's kind of fun seeing it from the backseat (Lardo had been very clear that she and Bitty weren't going to spend the whole trip stuck in the back because of the luck of height genetics). Once he thinks about it Shitty realizes he's remembering making the same drive on trips as a kid with his parents, back when they were still together, but he feels surprisingly warm and not-bitter about that. Maybe it's having Jack back there with him, playing Jotto and pestering the front seat for snacks like the oversized little brother Shitty never had.

"Punch buggy!" he almost starts, but thinks better of it. Lardo won't be driving forever, and her fists are vicious.

*

There's a fucking UFO in Albany, what's up with that.

*

They stop at a liquor store outside Buffalo to pick up a hostess gift for the Birkholtzes. Then they stop at a second liquor store when the first liquor store won't sell them the stupid Massachusetts-local blueberry port Bitty spent ten minutes picking out because everyone in the group has to have legal ID. Like the guy hadn't heard Bitty say "hostess gift" repeatedly, like twenty-year-olds even bought blueberry port to get schwasted. What the fuck ever. They leave Bitty in the car at the second place and Jack manages to find the same thing which, thank god, Shitty was not going to a third fucking liquor store so he could go crash with Holtzy.

*

They're lateish for dinner but not, like, hideously late; Lardo kind of has a lead foot. Holster hovers in the back rolling his eyes while his mom shows them in and demonstrates that she remembers everyone's names. When she gets to Lardo she pauses and says, "oh, Holster didn't tell me one of his friends was a young woman", and Lardo just sort of shrugs but, no, clearly this is going to be A Thing: Mrs. Birkholtz has to explain how she was going to put them all in the rec room but she'll just put some clean sheets on Adam's bed and he can give up his room, really, Adam.

"I'm fine in the - " Lardo starts, uncomfortable.

Mrs. Birkholtz doubles down on the concern eyes. "Oh, no, am I breaking up a couple?" she asks, gaze darting back and forth between Lardo and the rest of them like she might be able to see a dotted line in the air to show the connection. "I know some parents separate anyone unmarried, but I know colleges don't have curfews any more, and Adam left home so long ago now I just see you all as grown-ups, I guess."

"Bullshit," Holster coughs, but Lardo is busy reassuring Mrs. Birkholtz that she is not, at present, in a mandatory co-sleeping arrangement with any of her fellow road-trip-ees, so Holster escapes the Wrath of Mom for saying it.

*

The air mattress claims to hold 450 pounds but it's struggling under the mass of two hockey players. Holster had claimed one of the couches and then Jack had had some sort of fit of chivalry and assigned Bitty to the other one. Shitty might have thought that Jack, having a good forty pounds on him, would sink lower and sort of displace air over to Shitty's side and make it extra-springy, but this theory is in conflict with how Shitty can feel the floor against his hip through the mattress.

*

"Isn't Rans going to mind?"

"No, no way, he's still going to come out later and we'll do it again the two of us, he's just got that research thing right now. He was bummed to miss you guys, but, I don't know, it would be kind of weird, if it was him, and also you? I mean, it's our own special thing."

The Falls are pretty fucking spectacular, Shitty has to admit. He hasn't been since he was little, and he maybe vaguely wondered if they would turn out to be smaller, the way mountains turn into hills and wildernesses turn into city parks, but if anything they're bigger, enough to make the five of them tiny.

Holster insists that the boat ride is non-negotiable, so Jack buys them all tickets and Bitty takes a group selfie of them in their ridiculous blue garbage bags. (There's an unspoken but well-understood financial hierarchy for the trip, namely NHL player: Harvard law: a tie that nobody's tried to break between art major and athletic scholarship because nobody wants to argue the misery poker of that one. Enough that it's quietly obvious that Jack is picking up all the discretionary expenses.)

Out on the boat, the mist making diamonds in Lardo's eyelashes and the Falls roaring louder than anything Shitty's ever heard, even the crowd at the Frozen Four or the campus at Spring C, Shitty has to laugh out loud.

"We showed you a fucking thing," he yells in Bitty's ear, hugging him, and Bitty grins and agrees that, yes, he has now been to a place, and it's beautiful.

Jack has a waterproof bag thingy for his camera and takes a zillion pictures, of the Falls and the boats and of Shitty and Bitty and Lardo laughing.

*

That night, though, Shitty can't sleep. He keeps thinking about going over the falls in a barrel, how you'd be there in the dark in the river, and you wouldn't know how close you were to the edge, and then you'd suddenly be falling, maybe battered or bouncing like check after check and no referee, and then you're maybe stuck under there, suffocating or drowning alone in your barrel with a million cubic feet of water pounding down on it.

"Hey," he hears, quietly in the dark. "Shitty. Are you okay?"

He feels Bitty's hand on his arm. (They've swapped Jack up to the couch in hopes that the air mattress likes smaller people.)

Shitty has no idea what to say, but he guesses Bitty can feel him shaking, because the hand on his arm turns into long, stroking pets, until Shitty sighs and reaches out for Bitty's shirt.

"Hey," he mutters, "Will you - " and so Bitty scoots a little closer and wraps his arm over him, and Jack reaches down from the couch and puts his big talented hand on his shoulder, and Shitty's stupid body finally convinces his stupid brain they're not going to end up in a barrel of death and he can sleep.

*

Shitty wakes up around sunrise, dreaming of waterfalls and desperately needing to piss. Jack has withdrawn his hand at some point, but Bitty is still comfortably snuggled against him, warm and unconscious.

Shitty catches Holster watching them from the other couch, and wonders if he should be embarrassed. It's not like everyone in the Haus doesn't know he likes to be in other people's beds, given the fuss they all make about it.

Holster just grins in a sort of sympathetic way and whispers "Rans is a fucking octopus." Shitty honestly doesn't know whether that's the same sort of thing or not. He starts the process of trying to extricate himself without waking Bitty, and realizes as he does so that Jack is also awake, looking down at them with an expression Shitty can't begin to interpret.

*

They're leaving at hockey-practice hours, early enough that Mrs. Birkholtz is mercifully not awake to ask one more time if they need anything for the road and if Lardo is sure she, her parents, her spiritual advisers, and her third-grade teacher will be comfortable about her extended-duration presence sharing a car with three penises. Not that Mrs. Birkholtz phrases it like that but it's clear what she means. No one has attempted to raise the point of how many of those penises might have any interest in getting into Lardo in the first place; Shitty's certainly not going there if Lardo doesn't.

"She kept making a joke out it," Lardo rants in the car, "Except it wasn't. She actually said 'three men and a little lady' to me," and, wow, Shitty's almost never seen her mad enough to spit nails like that.

"No one here has any illusions that you're a lady, bro," Shitty says, and Lardo smiles at him so gratefully that Shitty almost doesn't feel guilty for lying to her.

*

Jack, hilariously, turns out to drive by setting the cruise control to one mile an hour above the speed limit and grimly occupying a middle lane. Shitty finds this particularly funny given that Bitty, who he would somehow have expected to drive like a granny, instead drives like he skates, faster than anything else on the road and constantly darting into the slightest openings.

It's only three hours down to Sandusky, and they pass the time compiling a list of songs for the ultimate road music playlist. Jack keeps suggesting dad music songs, like, Rush and Great Big Sea, could he be any more cliched, which everyone else mocks ruthlessly until Jack points out that his actual dad had once told him he had once listened to "Dreamline" while holding the Stanley Cup, which is, well. There's no disrespecting that. It goes on the list.

*

Okay, so: Cedar Point had not been on the original itinerary. Shitty had certainly noticed it sitting there on his intended route and had mentioned it to Jack, but Jack had said it didn't sound like much fun "with having to wait in line", which was one of those things that said more about Jack's overprivileged childhood than he usually tried to let on. So they were not going to go to Cedar Point and slum it up with the plebeians, except then there was Bitty, who it turned out had never been on a roller coaster, and Lardo, who - well. Shitty's only human, okay? Lardo flipped and turned every which way and maybe being harnessed in next to her getting to hear what kinds of sounds she makes when something intense is happening to her body, you don't just _drive past_ that. Shitty's not crazy, he knows they're not going to hold hands on the fucking Ferris wheel, he just wants this one plausible stop on their bro-tastic voyage.

When they get there Bitty makes sure everyone puts on sunscreen, and Jack buys them pricey line-jumping bracelets because this is apparently not the day he wants to explore the special new experience of queuing, and Lardo commandeers the map and announces that they're popping Bitty's roller coaster cherry on something called the Blue Streak, that's old and classic and about a quarter of the height of some of the steel titans towering over the park.

The cars seat two with a shared lap bar, which logically means Jack + Lardo and Shitty + Bitty for width-averaging reasons. Lardo puts Shitty and Bitty behind them so she can twist around while they're clanking up the first hill and shout that he shouldn't worry, nobody's fallen out in years.

Bitty goes kind of wide-eyed and then the first car is over the hill and falling and they're being whipped up and over the top and then plunging down, down, and Shitty's stomach is flying up into his lungs and Bitty is shrieking beside him in startled glee.

"More," Bitty says, as soon as they're all back on the platform, grinning and manic-eyed. "I want - bigger, faster, I want to go on _that_ ," pointing at one of the giants.

Jack knocks his FastLane wristband against Bitty's similarly-encircled wrist. "You got it," he says, "I mean, if Lardo says that's next, eh?"

*

Bitty loves the hanging coaster, the standing coaster, the one that goes a little bit upside down, the one that goes A LOT upside down, and the giant wooden one that feels like it's going to rattle Shitty's teeth out of his jaw. He _adores_ everything that's described as having been at some point the highest or fastest something in the world. Jack turns out to be a sucker for the on-ride camera and they collect a series of pictures of Bitty open-mouthed in fierce delight while the rest of them look variously pleased, determined, or alarmed.

The worst faces are all Shitty's. By the time they've made a full circuit of the park, Shitty is feeling like he just played three periods and skipped the post-game drinking to go straight into a hangover, while Bitty is debating the merits of repeating the Dragster versus the Millennium Force. Shitty's vision had greyed out on the Millennium Force, he's not sure he can take it a second time. Lardo chirps him brutally about being an old man but also steers Bitty towards some tamer rides "so he can get the full experience" and Shitty can catch his breath a little. Bitty happily kicks his feet on the Wave Swinger and "races" Jack on the racing derby carousel and Shitty's brains start to settle.

It's when they're getting on the log flume that it hits him. They've arranged themselves in size order, Lardo in the front, then Bitty, Shitty, and Jack in the back, and it's certainly very pleasant to be straddling a bench and floating along sandwiched between Bitty and Jack. Except Shitty can't help but recall that in his daydream about this very situation, it was Lardo between his thighs, and, okay, also Lardo at his back, so he's not the most coherent fantasizer, but the point is, now that he thinks about it he's not sure he's ended up next to Lardo once. And Shitty aced the logic games on the LSAT, he can arrange alphabetically-sequential people around a circular table in his _sleep_ , he should be boarding rides next to L purely by chance unless L is avoiding S. (Which, had he done something? Creeped too obviously? He'd had an undeniable boner getting off that one hanging coaster but they all had, except for Lardo herself of course, something about the saddle seats and the vertical loops.)

They flume along. Shitty tries to think back over the various boarding platforms, how they had decided who was sitting where. They've all been trying to give Bitty the fronts and the edges, and Lardo hasn't been obviously dodging him - but now that Shitty thinks about it, it's possible that it's not so much that L doesn't want to sit next to S as that B doesn't want to sit next to J, or maybe J next to B, but anyways, that some kind of complicated dance has been going on there all day with the unintentional side effect of cockblocking his Lardo roller coaster bro-sociation. Shitty is facing the possibility that he's a terrible friend for not even noticing something wrong between two of his best friends when they go down the final hill and splash down; Lardo, in front, gets soaked, and Shitty is distracted enough by the way her shirt plasters to her tits that his worrying goes to the back burner.

"We should have put Jack in front as a meat shield," she gripes, and Shitty can't help but catch the way Bitty flushes.

*

Bitty's intrigued by the Sling Shot but Jack says they'll have to do it without him.

"The Falconers contract specifies no bungee jumping," he says, "But I don't mind watching, if you want to - "

Bitty shakes his head, and they meander down the midway instead.

The barkers yell out at them to "win a prize for the lady", and Lardo starts to look tighter and tighter around the eyes, until Jack stops at the Break-a-Plate long enough to watch someone else play.

"I don't think it's rigged," he announces, and pays and, of course, knocks down three plates in three throws.

The operator hands him an enormous, neon-orange stuffed rabbit. Jack looks at it dubiously, then over at Lardo, who's shaking her head so minutely that Shitty's not sure she knows she's doing it.

Jack hands it to Bitty instead, and Lardo breaks into a grin of relief and approval. Bitty looks pretty delighted with the hideous thing too, and makes it wave at small children as they walk along.

*

They end up on the Giant Wheel at sunset.

"Wow," Shitty says, "I think Dex was right, it would be awesome to be able to, like, eat that, I wonder if different colors would taste different," and then he has to explain to Jack about superpowers and photosynthesis and that he's not having some kind of synesthetic seizure.

"Jack, we never found out your superpower," Bitty points out expectantly, and Jack looks away for a moment.

"Multiplicity," Jack says softly.

Bitty rolls his eyes. "Goodness gracious," he chirps, "You really _do_ want to be the only guy on the team. You think half of y'all would be happy with defense?"

"I feel for the goalie," Lardo puts in. And maybe nobody is holding hands, but Shitty is sitting here a hundred feet up in a gondola enjoying the lake breeze with the three people he loves best in the world and also a giant rabbit; that's a pretty good day.

*

"We are not staying for fireworks," Lardo says, "300 miles in the morning and we don't even have a motel yet."

There's no space in the car for a fifth passenger, so Bitty gives the rabbit away at the park gate to a thrilled-looking tiny child and its less-thrilled parents. He pokes his phone in the car and finds them an Econo Lodge with vacancies.

The problem is, Shitty can't sleep again; he lays his body down but he keeps feeling like he's still swooping and rocketing and rushing through space.

"Look, come here," Jack finally says, when Shitty's changed positions for the sixth or twelfth time, and then rolls over so Shitty can spoon him, which Jack almost never lets Shitty do. Shitty presses his face into the broad solidity of his back and focuses on the real, motionless warmth of him.

"He's really something," Jack whispers, when Shitty had thought he was long since asleep and is almost asleep himself. "Thank you for - I wouldn't have thought we could have something like this."

Shitty dreams about taking his LSATs on an endless, drenching log flume, where there's one answer he can never quite figure out.

*


	3. Go West, Young Bros

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: imagined sexual assault by a law enforcement officer, use of the little person slur "midget" to refer to short people of normal height, mention of claustrophobia.

*

They get pulled over just across the Indiana border.

Lardo's driving, flying along in the leftmost lane like she does (which is at least better than swerving, god, Bitty, defensive driving does not mean _deking_ ) and suddenly there are flashing lights in the rearview. It feels like it takes forever to make their way over to the right shoulder, and then Lardo's rolling down her window and putting her hands carefully on the wheel.

The officer starts with the basic questions - license and registration, do you know how fast you were going - but then it gets a little more complicated. Where are you folks from, where are you heading, have they been in Michigan, have they been in Canada.

"I'm going to have to ask you to exit the vehicle and come answer some questions in my cruiser," he says, and Lardo opens the door and exits with painful, slow precision.

Shitty is _freaking the fuck out_.

It's not a weed thing. It _can't_ be a weed thing, he's been religious about never even being in the car when he's worn clothes he smoked up in, and he always buys on foot. He twists to look back through the rearview window. The cop and Lardo are on the far side of the cruiser, away from traffic; the rear door is open, the cop is standing behind it, and Lardo is - sitting in the back? God, he can't see what's happening at all. The way they're positioned, nobody can see, the cop doesn't have a partner in the cruiser, and, _fuck_ , he could be molesting her, he could be sexually assaulting her at gunpoint, fuck, fuck, what is Shitty supposed to do?

"I'm calling my lawyer," Jack snaps.

Now Shitty is keeping one eye on the cruiser - he can't see the cop at all now, did he take a knee? is he inside with Lardo? - and one ear on Jack answering questions - yes, an urgent situation, pulled over for speeding, no, nothing illegal, until Jack gets to the part where he tries to explain what's actually happening and gets stuck on "still questioning her, or - " and just then the cop finally steps away and Lardo's getting out too and she looks - fine, not crying or anything, or _disarrayed_.

The cop walks back over to their car and leans in the still-open driver's side door.

"Which one of you is Mr. Knight?"

"Me," Shitty says.

"You're the owner of this vehicle?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me where you were two days ago?"

Shitty blinks. "In Buffalo. Buffalo New York."

"And your destination today?"

"Chicago."

"Were the fireworks any good?"

This is surreal. "We didn't stay."

"Okay," the cop says, "Y'all go along now, be sure to watch your speed. And son - " he says to Jack, still on the phone - "You should not ever, ever take out your phone during a traffic stop again, I do not care who called you."

Jack just nods. The cop leaves. Lardo gets back in the car.

"Oh my goodness, Lardo, are you okay?" Bitty is on her immediately, squeezing her shoulder like he's checking for injury. "That was so scary!"

"I got a $152 speeding ticket," she says sourly, "Why the fuck are you on your phone?"

That last at Jack, who is explaining that the situation seems to have resolved itself.

"Lawyer," he tells Lardo.

"You called your _lawyer_?" she asks.

"We thought he was raping you!" Shitty yells back, "Or, shit, I don't know, we had _no idea_ -"

There are bright red spots on Lardo's cheekbones. "What, just because I'm a _girl_ \- "

"YES," Shitty shouts back, "Because he stopped a car with four people and picked the one who's 5' 4" and the _gender that random assholes assault_ \- "

"Because I was _driving_ \- " Lardo yells.

"Lardo," Jack says. He's got shotgun and he leans all the way across the front, resting his forehead against hers. "It's not that we didn't think you could handle yourself," he says. "Obviously, you can and you did. We just wanted to have your back."

She sighs. "Okay," she says. "Okay. You're saying you would have called if it was Bits?"

"Probably even faster," Jack says. Bitty makes an odd little noise.

"I think he was hoping we were running drugs," Lardo says, as she finally starts the car and pulls back onto the highway. "Find something that didn't add up in our stories, get cause to search?"

"I'm going to be a lawyer," Shitty says belatedly, "Oh my god." The sound of Lardo laughing makes the shock of the realization worth it.

*

Chicago sucks. It had sounded so good - Chicago! - but Shitty doesn't have a lot of, like, actual sight-seeing ideas. Nobody packed nice clothes, so they can't go out to fancy restaurants. Lardo wants to go to the Art Institute, and Shitty wants to go with her - he loves it when she takes him to ICA and tells him which installations are awesome and which are bullshit, and they've done the MFA a couple of times, even though Shitty likes sentimental Victorian garbage art like Leighton and Alma-Tadema and Lardo likes Calder mobiles and giant clamshells made of thousands of threads of colored glass. Unfortunately when he says he wants to go with Lardo she thinks he's saying she shouldn't go by herself, which is not what he means at all, but she's stomping off with a motel key and a CTA map before he manages to explain himself.

Bitty wants to do something Blackhawks-related so Shitty tags along to go look at the outsides of the IceHouse and the United Center. Neither is very interesting given that the Blackhawks themselves are scattered for the off-season and won't be back for months.

"It's weird to think you're going to play here," Bitty tells Jack outside the United Center.

"At least once a year, yeah", Jack shrugs. "Wait, when the Falcs play the Hawks, you're not..."

"I'm not?" Bitty prompts, when Jack fails to finish his sentence.

"I wouldn't want you to have to root against your team," Jack says stiffly.

"Jack Laurent Zimmermann, as if I would cheer for a team you were playing against! Obviously the Falconers should beat the Blackhawks and the Blackhawks can beat everyone else."

Shitty throws his arms over both their shoulders. "So there they are, the Falconers and the Blackhawks, facing each other in the Stanley Cup finals, and that wouldn't be a little bit hard?"

"It sounds fine to me," Bitty says loftily, "And you'll get me tickets for that?"

"Sure, Bitty," Jack says softly, "Any game you want."

It's the first time Shitty has ever heard Jack acknowledge he might stay in touch with any of them, and he thinks he would be jealous he said it to Bitty if he wasn't so delighted he said it at all.

"I'm holding you to that," Shitty says, arms still around their necks, which is making him rather diagonal. And then he changes the subject to cut Jack a break, because he knows he handles emotions best in small doses. "Millennium Park?"

Millennium Park is weaksauce, it's just a city park with a big weird Gehry building that Shitty would need Lardo to tell him whether it was cool or not, and a giant super-shiny blob surrounded by tourists.

Bitty does accidentally take the _best picture in the history of photography_ , though, a shot of Jack taking pictures of the Bean, some distance in the background, at precisely the moment Jack decides to bend over and take pictures of pigeons instead.

"A masterpiece of parallelism," Shitty declares, "You should call it 'Two Big Round Objects'," and begs Bitty to send it to him. Bitty is brick red but hasn't actually deleted the picture, Shitty's pretty sure, which means it's only a matter of time before Shitty is victorious.

Jack pretends he doesn't know them.

*

When Lardo meets them for dinner, she doesn't have hair.

"Goodness gracious!" Bitty says. "Look at you!" He's reaching his hands out to touch and Lardo ducks her head a little and lets him, and then Jack does too.

"You know you want to," Bitty says to Shitty, and, _fuck_ , he wants to. The buzz cut is impossibly soft under his hand, like velvet, and Shitty can feel himself getting stoned on it, he just wants to stroke it forever. Maybe rub his face on it. But that would be a weird thing to do in a restaurant waiting area, and anyways Lardo is going to knock his hands away any second now.

They try to figure out at dinner whether Shitty has longer hair than the other three of them combined. He's pretty sure he does; Bitty's been keeping his tight since playoffs and Jack never has much flow. Shitty's vaguely considered chopping for law school, but, fuck it, someone around here needs hockey hair or they're going to forget their roots.

*

Shitty calls a road trip steering committee meeting the next morning over whether they should stick with his original plan, to take I-90 all the way to Seattle, or whether they should bail onto I-80 when it splits back off.

"Jack brought it up," Shitty tells Lardo, sitting on Bitty's bed while Bitty's in the shower. "He said he thought maybe Bitty would get more out of San Francisco than Seattle."

"Does that mean _Jack_ wants to go to San Francisco?" Lardo asks.

"I don't think so?" Shitty says. "He sounded sort of sad about it, actually. I don't know."

"This is your graduation trip," Lardo says. "Bits'll be fine in Seattle. Let me tell you about the museum," and goes on for five minutes about this Brancusi sculpture of a bird that, when she pulls it up on her phone to show him, looks like either a very stylized trophy or a futuristic dildo.

"Oh, bro," Lardo says, and a few phone queries later it turns out that it is not even remotely the Brancusi sculpture that looks the most like a sex toy. Bitty comes out of the shower and asks what they're looking at and flushes scarlet when she shows him.

*

"Maybe we should have tried setting up the tents before we left?"

"You think," Lardo says.

The tents are - fuck. Shitty had just figured he would bring his dad's old Boy Scout tent, which has turned out to be as rank and rotten at the core as the idea of his dad being a good Boy Scout. The smell is not so much "musty" as "decomposing", there's some sort of infestation of tiny larvae in one corner which Jack had to scrape away with one of Bitty's butter knives, everyone else proclaiming themselves too grossed out to touch it, and it's the kind of tent that's held up by lines and stakes, only they're missing half the stakes, so it's listing dramatically.

"Maybe we could use this as another stake?" Jack asks, picking up the butter knife.

"I certainly do not want it back," Bitty says immediately.

When the plan had gone from two to four, Shitty had told Jack they would need a second tent. Jack had apparently tent shopped by the "click on the first thing you see" method. His tent had practically sprung forth from the bag fully formed; it's like a modernist sculpture made out of shiny nylon, held up by, who even knows, NASA science and Canadian ingenuity, and it's approximately the size of a coffin.

"It said it was two-person!" Jack objects.

"Maybe if they're married midgets," Shitty says. "Why did you buy a two-man tent anyways, fucker, there are four of us."

"I thought you were bringing one," Jack says back, "Not a - " His mouth opens and closes, like he can't even come up with an appropriate chirp for Shitty's tent.

Bitty and Lardo exchange glances and are suddenly falling all over each other laughing.

"Okay," Bitty says, "You guys get Shitty's shitty tent, the midgets call Jack's."

"Hey," Jack starts, but he can't really argue; if he takes his own tent, there won't be room for a second person in it, meaning three of them will have to suffer in Shitty's.

"Maybe it'll air out?" Shitty says hopefully.

"You better unroll your sleeping bag," Lardo says.

Shitty does so, outside the tent just in case, but it seems to be mercifully bug free. It smells appalling in its own way, a weird chemical tang and unsettling stickiness to the nylon, but at this point "nothing living in it" seems most essential. Jack has identical new sleeping bags for himself and Bitty, which for some reason makes him scowl when Shitty points it out, and Lardo, adorably, has a well-worn Batman bag that she says she used to use at slumber parties.

"Batman," Shitty says. "I thought you went for Superman."

"I was _eight_ ," Lardo says, but Shitty follows her singing "Darkness, no parents," until she punches him in the side.

Shitty had had a sort of vision of everyone sitting around a campfire, but then failed to follow that thought to the logical conclusion of needing to buy firewood. He had, when they got groceries in town, picked up a case of beer, asking Jack if it was okay and getting an eye roll and a "NHL hasn't gone dry". Whatever, Shitty would rather be overprotective than thoughtless any day. So they don't have a fire, but they have beer, and Lardo, because she is a phenomenally talented visual artist like that, wraps a red T-shirt around the white fluorescent glare of the lantern.

It's nice, sitting around the picnic table talking about nothing in particular. Shitty is really tired. Their longest day of driving yet, and he's surprised by how exhausting it is just to sit on his ass all day in a car; maybe they should have just found a campground in Minnesota but Shitty's kind of getting into the feeling of accomplishment of every new state line.

"Bitty," he says, "You must have like twice as many states now," and it turns out that Jack is leading in states but Lardo crushes everyone in countries and continents.

"But bro," she says, "I don't even care, it's not a checklist. I think I want to go to India next, or maybe, like, Iceland."

"Sounds kinda alphabetical to me," Bitty says. He's a beer ahead of Shitty and sprawling against Lardo's shoulder, occasionally reaching up to pet her head. Sometimes Shitty thinks it must be pretty great to be Bitty, the way he doesn't have to be loud to be wholehearted.

"You're a Hufflepuff," he says, poking Bitty in the arm. "Or maybe a Gryffindor?"

"Jack's the Gryffindor," Bitty says, shaking his head.

"Nah, bro, Jack's the Ravenclaw, duh. I'm the Slytherin - I guess you're the Gryffindor," Shitty says to Lardo, surprised.

"Maybe it doesn't map," she says dryly.

"Okay," Shitty says, "Then - Fantastic Four."

"I'm not the girl," Lardo says.

"Fuck no," Shitty agrees, "Jack's the girl, with the invisibility. You're the Thing, I'm Mr. Fantastic, and Bitty's Johnny."

"I knew you had a stretchy fetish," Lardo chirps. Shitty might or might not, whatever.

Jack narrows his eyes at Shitty. "Are you saying we're married?" he asks.

"You get comic book references!" Bitty says, like Jack just gave him a present. "And, haha, he's saying I'm flaming, so."

"You are a little flaming," Shitty says, "I mean - fuck, words. You've obviously decided that you're comfortable with some stereotypically feminized interests in your self-presentation. Which, rock on."

Bitty rolls his head from side to side. "I don't know if I really _decided_ ," he says, "When I was younger I was just _me_ , and then when I figured out I liked men it seemed almost like a funny coincidence, that I was a figure skater with good housekeeping skills with that orientation, what are the odds. I guess it still does."

"But doesn't it bother you," Lardo asks, "That people look at you or know one thing about you and think they know your whole story."

Bitty shrugs and stares down hard at his bottle. "I was really sad recently," he says, "And I did ask myself, what if I wasn't such a twink, what if I had serious academic interests, what if I had been my mother's good Southern daughter, would that have been better, but - "

"Bitty," Shitty interrupts, "I don't know where to start. I didn't even know you knew the word twink, and, what the fuck, you have to tell us when you're sad." Bitty being sad is just wrong.

"As I was about to say," Bitty says, making a face, "I don't think I would even be up here at Samwell if I wasn't - everything. There are worse stories," he tells Lardo.

"Are you still sad?" Jack asks.

Bitty closes his eyes. "I like this trip," he says. "Even if Shitty's tent smells like someone left wet socks in an unplugged fridge."

"That makes no sense," Shitty objects, "And, hey, it's not _that_ bad."

"You tell yourself that," Lardo says, and then she's excusing herself to go off to the campground bathroom with her toiletries kit and Bitty is collecting empties because he read the campground rules and has been taking the clean-campsite thing very seriously, and Shitty is still wondering about the answer to Jack's question.

*

"I think I hardly smell it at all now."

Maybe the smell is actually airing out, or maybe Shitty's nose is just going dead.

"Ugh," Jack grunts.

"I'm on a rock," Shitty complains.

"Move," Jack suggests.

"I'm not going in the bug corner," Shitty says.

Jack doesn't answer. Shitty lies awake for a few minutes, listening to grasshoppers or cicadas or whatever's singing bug songs out in the night. It's kind of weird, knowing there's just this one piece of fabric between him and everything out there.

A light bobs; must be Bitty, finally coming back from his own trip to the campground bathroom. Bitty's kind of serious about his skin care.

The zhush of a tent zipper.

"Bits," he hears Lardo say.

"Oh, my," Bitty says. "It really is tight, isn't it." Jack, next to Shitty, twitches a little.

They're close enough to the other tent that Shitty can hear rustling noises.

"I'm not sure I'm going to fit." Jack is so still it must be deliberate.

"Just slide in," Lardo tells Bitty, and, god, it's all perfectly innocent, it shouldn't be so unintentionally pornographic, but it's way too easy for Shitty to picture a different scenario going on over there.

There are more rustling noises.

"Let me just - oh! _'Scuse_ me, Miz Larissa."

A zipper zipping; the light goes out.

"Bitty?" Lardo asks. She sounds weird, tentative. "The Southern manners thing. You don't have to do that."

"It's pretty ingrained," Bitty says.

"No," Lardo says. "I mean - I would rather. You didn't. With the Miz Larissa."

There's a silence.

"Okay," Bitty says. "Um. Is it okay if I ask - _Mister_ Larissa?"

She laughs a little. "Oh, bro." Shitty is basically not breathing, he's so intent on listening. "I don't know. Not really? I just hate the way _girl_ is the first thing anyone sees. It was what my mom said when I told her about the trip, before anything else, 'one of these things is not like the other ones'."

"That's silly," Bitty says. "We're obviously, um, two bros in a shitty tent and two bros in an awesome tent."

"Or two students and two graduates."

"Yeah," Bitty says, a catch in his voice. "Or that."

"Goodnight, bro."

"Goodnight, bro."

Shitty lies awake for a long time, breathing in the stifling dark.

*

The two-thirds of the trunk occupied by Bitty's coolers and boxes of kitchen supplies finally make sense when Bitty cooks camp breakfast. Maybe knowing your way around a Coleman stove is part of Southern tailgating? There's pancakes and bacon and coffee and orange juice, all somehow conjured up at a picnic table. Morning with Bitty cooking and Jack and Lardo stumbling around in their pajamas and honest-to-god birds singing in the fucking trees is like something from a car commercial or something. Maybe laundry detergent. "Your family lives life to the fullest, make sure their clothes look nice!"

They pack up the sleeping bags and tents. Shitty thinks he remembers more or less how it all fit in the trunk, but is clearly wrong, unless the Volvo has changed shape during the night. Fortunately Lardo is some kind of spatial genius and gets it done quickly once she pushes him out of the way.

South Dakota turns out to be vast and empty. Shitty is used to thinking of the sky as a sort of circle overhead, but out here it's a bowl, it's an enormous dome. It comes all the way down to their feet. He looks up and gets dizzy. He can't handle the hush of so much silence; every time they get out of the car he finds himself babbling, yelling nonsense about self-serve gas and how somebody better fucking buy him more sunflower seeds.

In the car, he makes Bitty find songs they can sing along with and turns them up loud enough to drown out his singing, party classics like "Raise Your Glass" and "Call Me Maybe" and even some oldies like "I'm Gonna Be", the song about walking a thousand miles to fall down at your door. Even Jack is willing to sing along with that one; he has a nice voice and Shitty hates it that he's had so few chances to hear it, that Jack has always stood back when the Haus breaks into song. And he hates that they're all driving so much more than a thousand miles and they won't be with each other afterwards. But it's still a good song.

*

"Y'all are going to chirp me forever," Bitty says, "But this would be easier with a selfie stick."

Shitty had insisted that it was very important that they take a group picture in front of Mt. Rushmore posing like the Mt. Rushmore heads. He's assigned Jack to Washington, Bitty to Jefferson, Lardo to Roosevelt, and himself to Lincoln sticking out on the end. Then he had worried that Lardo would think he had given her Roosevelt because Roosevelt was the non-allstar of the four presidents. But he was also really butch, like, all about the manly fighting and shooting things, Shitty had actually once written a paper about Sarah Palin co-opting the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt for the modern Republican agenda.

Anyways the point is that they obviously need a good group shot here and Jack, in the best position to get the shot, is, like, hilariously bad at self-aiming.

"It's the wrong side of the camera," he complains after the third shot that fails to have all four heads in it. Lardo rolls her eyes at everybody and gets another tourist to take the picture for them, a motherly lady who is very impressed to hear they're driving across the whole country.

"But I'm surprised you young people don't have one of those sticks," she adds, when she hands Bitty's phone back to Lardo.

Maybe for Christmas, Shitty thinks, except that's crazy, they'll have long since gone their separate ways by Christmas.

*

Lardo is surprised when Shitty admits that they're bypassing a chunk of I-90 to go see a cave.

"But we'll get it on the way back," he reassures her, and she laughs at him just like he wanted.

*

It's a hot day. They all dutifully bring sweatshirts to the cave tour like the information told them to, but Shitty isn't really prepared for how cold it is, like stepping out onto the ice without socks or pads. He can feel the hair on his legs standing up.

It's apparently the third-longest cave in the world, but the tour only goes into a little bit of it. That makes Shitty shiver a little too, like the idea of swimming on the surface of very deep water, the unknown expanse out of sight underneath. And there's the unnerving weight of the stone overhead. He remembers touring some cave as a kid with his parents and thinking it was neat, being proud to already know the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. More evidence that kids are too dumb to really see what's around them, maybe. Bitty loves it of course, looks at all the crystals and shit the ranger points out. He's never been in a cave before. There's probably a good Freudian joke in there, but, fuck it, Shitty isn't going to bother.

The guide gets them in one particular chamber and announces that she's going to turn off the lights so that they can experience the cave in its natural total darkness. Please put away cameras, phones, or any other light sources. Please refrain from talking and listen to the wind - the cave is really windy in some places, which Shitty didn't realize could happen underground.

She turns off the lights. It's dark.

Shitty blinks, but of course his eyes don't start to adjust, there's nothing to adjust to. He waves his hand in front of his face. Nothing. Shitty suddenly can't remember exactly which way he'd been facing when the lights went out. Is he near any drop-offs? Had he heard footsteps when she turned off the lights, the ranger probably knows the whole cave system literally blindfolded, she could just _leave_ them down here and they'd be completely helpless - 

Arms wrap around him from both sides.

"Hey," Bitty whispers from his shoulder, "We've got you," and Jack's familiar warm breath is in his other ear, and small hands grope up his chest until Lardo's cold little fingers are covering his eyes. He feels instantly safe - it's normal not to be able to see when someone's got their hand over your eyes - and when the lights come back on they don't flinch away, just shift until Bitty and Lardo each have one of Shitty's hands, and they walk like that until the next set of stairs where they have to go single file.

The air is almost oven-like when they finally leave the cave, and Shitty can feel it baking the last bits of tension right out of him.

*

By the time they're setting up camp - early, Bitty wants to cook something complicated for dinner - the heat is more oppressive than welcome. It's neither humid nor dry, just a uniform blistering airlessness. Shitty shucks off his shirt while they're setting up the tents and Jack and Bitty quickly follow suit; it's balls hot, and Shitty's seriously wondering if he can get away with dropping his shorts, too, the campground is pretty empty and their site has a lot of bushes.

"Fuck this," Lardo says suddenly, putting down the tent stake she's pounding and peeling off her shirt and bra. "Wow, that's so much better."

Shitty almost swallows his tongue, because JESUS. She's seen his junk often enough, in both hockey and Haus-related contexts, but he's never seen her topless. Her tits are tiny, soft little curves he wants to get his mouth all over, and she's got the sweetest little nipples, and Shitty is now ragingly hard in his cutoffs and has no idea what he should even do. He can't _move_. Bros don't stare at bros, right?

"Gllph," he says, or something like it.

"Oh, hey, Lardo," Bitty says from the picnic table, "Can you get me out the little cooler? I couldn't spot it in the trunk."

"It's behind the pans," Lardo says, and goes to do that, and maybe Shitty can breathe again?

Bitty is laughing at him. Fucking immunity to boobies. Shitty looks around for Jack - you'd think Mr. Canadian Repression would at least have the decency to get flustered - but he's pounding the abandoned tent stake like he just don't care.

Shitty assigns himself the task of sitting very still with his hands in his lap, and watches Bitty assemble something complicated out of multiple pots on the camp stove. It almost seems like the stove should be redundant in the heat.

Jack fishes out a deck of cards from somewhere and challenges Lardo to a game of War. War, of all stupid things. If it was slapjack Shitty could at least feel the skin of her hand. Also he's not playing. Is Bitty kneading bread? Shitty's hands make little kneading motions of their own.

The sound of a car pulling up startles him out of his hypnotic trance.

"Afternoon," the ranger says, getting out of the car. Ranger? Highway patrol? They're on state land, Shitty thinks. "Ma'am, we've had a complaint of indecent exposure, and I need to ask you to cover yourself, we have families camping here."

"Right," Lardo says tightly, "Of course," and yanks her shirt back over her head mutely. Shitty can't tell if she's mortified or furious.

"Bless your heart, didn't realize it was no shirts no service," Bitty says, and goes and retrieves his own shirt.

"Now, it's just - " the cop/ranger starts.

"We're very sorry," Jack says, Canadian polite as he puts his shirt on. "Is there anything else?"

The ranger makes a face like he does want to say something else, but he gets back in his car and leaves.

"You guys don't have to - " Lardo starts.

"We _do_ ," Shitty says, finally re-dressing himself. "Fuck, bro, all for bro and bro for all, right?"

*

Bitty's chili and fresh-baked bread is pretty amazing even if they have to wear their fucking shirts.

*

Shitty doesn't know a damn thing about the stars, but he knows between the heat and the lingering horniness he's not getting to sleep easily, so he sets himself up a little stargazing base.

"Is that my sleeping bag?" Jack asks, while Shitty's unzipping it.

"Relax," Shitty says, "I spread mine out underneath, it won't get dusty." He plops himself down in the middle.

"What if I want to go to sleep," Jack asks.

"I guess you'll have to find somewhere to hang out while you wait, asshole," Shitty says, and spreads out his arms invitingly.

Jack kicks him in the ankle but lies down obligingly, moving Shitty's arm so they're shoulder-to-shoulder instead of cuddling.

"Lardo?" Shitty calls.

"Yeah, okay," she says, turning off the lantern and shuffling over to them in the dark. She settles her head on his other shoulder and, fuck, this is exactly why it's such a disaster for her to be along on the trip, that Shitty can't stop himself from setting up a _pretext_ like this like a fucking creeper. Because of course this is exactly what he was hoping for.

He tries to at least make himself look at the damn stars instead of, like, closing his eyes and smelling her.

The stars are actually pretty amazing. There's just so fucking many of them; Shitty has no idea how anyone picks out just a few for a constellation. The night sky seems as full as the daytime sky is empty, like it's showing off, like Shitty can for once be quiet and still because something else is grandstanding.

"Hey," Bitty asks, "Room for me?"

"Always," Shitty answers, but that's sort of a lie, he's personally out of shoulders.

Bitty stands there uncertainly, a dark blot against the sky, looking back and forth between Jack and Lardo. He sits down next to Jack.

"This okay?" he asks.

"It's fine," Jack says, and Bitty lies down gingerly.

"Quit fidgeting," Jack says after a moment, and Bitty makes a soft sound.

Lardo sighs a little. If Shitty tipped his head a little, he could feel the fuzz of her shorn hair against his cheek. If he turned his head more he could kiss her.

"Hey, that one's moving!" Bitty says, and Jack says "I think that's a plane."

Then something moves faster, a little streak like the negative image of a puck in Shitty's peripheral vision.

"That was a shooting star!" Bitty says.

"Make a wish," Lardo says.

Shitty's wishes all seem too big and impossible for that barely-there streak. He wonders what Bitty might wish for, or Lardo.

They lie there until Shitty thinks he sees the whole sky slowly wheeling, that he can feel the planet turning underneath him. It's dizzying in the best way, and he pouts when Lardo says they have to go to sleep.

*

So possibly visiting a massive underground volcano that's going to inevitably explode and destroy the continent was a symbolically bad decision? They peel off I-90 again to drive down to Yellowstone because Shitty feels like they can't get this close and leave Old Faithful off of Bitty's Greatest Hits Tour of America.

Shitty, himself, feels wound up and ready to go off, and he can't even tell if he means an orgasm or a screaming fit. Maybe both. The whole car feels full of similar tension, they should all be making geyser-themed innuendo and instead everyone is just sort of eyeing each other. Shitty wishes he knew when the fuck you were supposed to jerk off while camping, wishes he'd broken his own rules and brought a joint in his car.

Old Faithful ejaculates. Erupts. Whatever. If this was a teen movie it would probably be the end of a montage of everyone making out. But no one is making out. Bitty and Jack seem to have some static charge between them making Jack twitch away if Bitty gets too close, and they keep staring at each other like they're trying to pass telepathic messages whenever Jack hands Bitty a water bottle or Bitty hands Jack a sandwich. Shitty wonders if he should remind them that telepathy doesn't actually work.

Lardo inspects the park map and announces that she's not skipping things named "prismatic springs" or "artists' paint pots". Jack gets really into it, stopping every ten feet along the boardwalks to take more pictures and talk to Lardo about color and light. Shitty and Bitty are left just sort of standing there, arguing over whether the bubbling mud smells more like rotten eggs or packaged hot dogs.

Lardo and Jack have their heads pressed together, both trying to look through Jack's camera at once, when a little old lady tourist taps Jack on the arm and tells him she's been listening and thinks it's so sweet that he and his wife are both artists.

"Thanks," Jack says by rote, the weirdest expression on his face, and the whole thing should be hilarious, but honestly, Shitty has to admit to himself, it's painful.

It's painful in at least two different ways. First, of course, that if anybody's going to get mistaken for the bride of Lardo, he'd rather it be him, thanks. But also that none of them are for keeps like that, that it might almost be worth it for it to be Jack and Lardo for real if it gave them one real enduring connection, Jack&Lardo hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas with Shitty welcome and Bitty bringing pie.

"I'm going back to the car," real-Bitty says pielessly, and Shitty bros along despite Bitty's statement that nothing's wrong.

*

Things aren't any better back at the campsite. Bitty is missing an ingredient; he's cranky because they're sharing a bear box with three other campsites and he's going to have to repack all their food to fit. Lardo buggers off to go shower and doesn't come back. Jack decides this is the moment he needs to catch up on his conditioning and starts doing calisthenics in the open space in front of the tents. Bitty burns the tacos. Someone from the next campsite over asks them to turn down their music, like Bitty's crappy phone speakers are even that loud. Lardo finally returns, having waited in line for almost an hour at the women's showers, watching a steady stream of men breeze in and out of the men's.

Shitty mostly tries to nod and sympathize in the right places, he doesn't get the feeling Bitty and Lardo want to be jollied out of their snits. Jack might be angry or frustrated or just honestly working hard, it's so hard to tell with Jack. Shitty does a dinner conversation monologue so that they're not just sitting there making grumpy faces for each other, some whole line of bullshit about Smokey the Bear and the Disneyfication of wilderness, even Shitty himself does not know what the fuck he's talking about, but it's better than silence.

"We're going hiking tomorrow," Jack announces while they wash the dishes.

Shitty immediately flicks him with soapy water. "Pretty sure we're driving away tomorrow."

"I found a hike that's short and strenuous," Jack says, like this is supposed to be a ringing endorsement. "You might not be playing any more but Bitty still needs to keep in shape."

It rings in Shitty's ears: _not playing any more_. He feels like Jack just slapped him in the face.

And then there's Bitty: "Excuuuse me, Jack Zimmermann, but as you are _not my captain any more_ , I fail to see how my training regimen is any of - "

Clang: Lardo drops the pot she's drying. It hits the bench of the picnic table and rolls off into the dirt. Bitty is startled into silence.

"Oops," she says. "Guess you'll have to do that one again."

Shitty picks it up mechanically.

"Sorry," Jack says after a moment. "I could have said that better."

"No shit," Shitty says, and the moment has been survived, but it's still there, one more geyser underneath.

*

Jack's hike actually turns out to be nice at first - they go down a bunch of staircases into a canyon and look at a waterfall, and it's no Niagara Falls or anything but it's pretty.

Then Jack shows off by running back up the stairs, and Bitty makes a point of sauntering up slowly, and Lardo falls and bangs her shin trying to take the steps two at a time and won't let Shitty help her up, and by the time Bitty's finally at the top Jack is glowering and Shitty is so fucking done with Yellowstone.

*

The mood in the car reminds Shitty of the _last_ road trip he ever took with both his parents. This is not a good comparison.

*

Things fall apart further at the continental divide.

It hits Shitty in the guts, when he sees the sign, and he makes them stop as much to give himself some time to process as to give Bitty a chance to take a selfie. It's pretty literally all downhill to the ocean from here; everything after this is just accelerating to the end. He feels that same scraped-out feeling he had on campus, the inescapable lastness of things, and he feels unbearably stupid for thinking he could outrun it with ten tanks of gas and an E-ZPass. He wanders around the pullout, thinking of how two drops of rain could fall here next to each other, and one could roll left and one could roll right and they would never see each other again, how that's what a divide is.

Fuck, he needs to blast himself in the face with his own air horn. Except he left it at the Haus. Maybe the Volvo's horn? ... he hears Jack's voice from the other side of the car.

" - your friend."

Bitty answers something, but Shitty can't tell what. Maybe he shouldn't be walking closer.

" - space."

Something else muffled from Bitty. " - then I'm sorry, but you said it was okay." His voice rises a bit at the end; he's upset.

"It wasn't a blank check, Bittle!"

"When have I _ever_ \- "

"This is hard for me too!"

And Jack _doesn't shout_ , unless he's on the ice, so, yeah, fuck it, Shitty's around the car and interfering. Bitty and Jack are staring at each other, both red in the face and breathing hard; Bitty looks outraged, and Jack - Jack looks wounded, and, fuck, as awful as the tension in the car had been, Shitty is suddenly convinced that letting it erupt _here_ would be ten times worse. Because they're still going to have to get back in the fucking car with each other.

"I will make you a deal," he says quickly. "Everybody says the unforgivable things in Seattle, how about that?"

Well, he's got their attention; Bitty and Jack are both looking at him like he's crazy.

"Major international airport," Shitty tells them. "You don't want to stomp away in fucking Montana, you're gonna be on some shit propeller plane just to get to an airport where they've got a plane big enough to get out of the state."

Bitty and Jack exchange a quick look. "Shitty," Bitty says slowly, "This isn't about - we're not going to abandon you over - "

"I don't want to know," Shitty says quickly. That's mostly a lie; he definitely wants them both to feel like they can tell him. It's just that in all the ways there are going to be lastness, Bitty and Jack admitting to some irreconcilable rift isn't one he's ready to accept yet. "Tell me all about it in Seattle, okay?"

"What are we telling you in Seattle?" Lardo asks. Shitty has no idea how much she overheard.

"Everything," Shitty says. "I mean, whatever you want to, but not here."

Lardo blinks at him.

"Okay," she says. "Let's go."

*


	4. What You Can't Outrun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: none? Please let me know if I'm missing something. ETA: mention of menstruation.

*

Shitty wonders if now that they've put Seattle out there like that, they're going to go for it, push hard, and drive into the night to get there, but in fact the opposite happens: everyone seems to slow down a little. Jack wants to stop and take pictures. Lardo lets them linger over lunch. Bitty becomes obsessed with stopping at roadside stands looking for huckleberries, which, he explains several times, are just coming into season.

They come across a little state campground when it's barely midafternoon, but nobody mentions how many hours of daylight they still have. It's basically empty, that's nice. They pick a site and set up the tents. There is a brief but vigorous argument over how to angle them with the slope of the campsite. Jack announces that he's going for a run. Bitty sets up his camp stove baking apparatus and starts turning roadside-stand strawberries into a pie. (They have kind of a lot of strawberries now. Because of course Bitty couldn't resist buying something every time they stopped.)

Shitty takes a handful of strawberries and wanders off to take a little walk of his own.

He tries not to lie to himself: his heart had _leapt_ at the hint of an implication that Lardo might have something to tell him in Seattle. Which is fucking stupid, because the most reasonable interpretation is that Lardo just wanted to get them on the road again. Even if she had been saying she had something important to share, it would be gross for Shitty to assume any part of Lardo's story is about him. Maybe she's decided she _is_ Mr. Duan, or she's decided to accept representational art into her heart, or she's finally going to confess to stealing his trample-the-patriarchy shirt. 

Maybe she's bailing in Seattle. Maybe everyone is bailing in Seattle. Fuck, Shitty can't drive the whole way home solo. Maybe he doesn't want a car in Cambridge anyways and should just sell the Volvo out here. He could ship Bitty his cooking stuff. What difference does it even make? An extra few days back across the country - it's still the end. Shitty's life will be eaten by law school, Jack will get assimilated into the NHL Borg, Lardo and Bitty get to crawl back in the cocoon for a little while longer.

Fuck, Shitty wants to scream. Or, like, kick a bush. Why is the sky so stupidly blue? Why are the strawberries so sweet? The sun is falling through the pine trees and making splotches and stripes on the ground. There's knee-high green grass beside the path. Everything is over and everyone is leaving but this random little nothing campground is still unbearably beautiful and he feels fucking _lighter_ just walking around it, like everything other than being here is ridiculous. Jack, running around it somewhere, is getting to see this. Lardo and Bitty are back at the campsite waiting for them.

Suddenly Shitty knows what he wants to do, if this is their last night. He runs back to the campsite and jumps in his car.

"Be right back!" he yells out the window. He remembers a firewood stand just a mile or two back.

*

"All that careful building doesn't matter if you can't reach the tinder," Bitty says. He's dismantled Shitty's elaborate layered teepee and built something much simpler, a couple of big sticks over a nest of smaller sticks and pine needles. There's something appealing about the easy way he flicks Shitty's lighter and reaches in with the flame.

It catches, unlike Shitty's last five attempts. Lardo claps until Shitty glares at her.

Bitty tosses the lighter back to Shitty.

"So," Lardo says. "Marshmallows?"

"It was alarming," she had said earlier, when Shitty came back. It had failed to occur to him that watching one's only means of transport driving away without explanation might be a little stressful. "Sometimes I don't know about you."

"Hey," Shitty had said, stung. "You should know about me by now." He's always tried to be pretty easy to know, he's thought. Also, like he would ever leave them.

"Not yet," Bitty says now to Lardo. "They'll roast better over the coals, once the flames die down a little."

"Are you saying I have to delay my gratification?" Shitty whines to Bitty. "What fun is that."

"Better than no gratification at all," Bitty says.

Shitty is still on the lookout for whether Bitty is sad. Bitty sounded pretty sad just then.

"In that case," Shitty says, "Ghost stories!"

He starts in on what he claims is a completely true story about going down the Cape with his parents as a kid and finding their friends' cottage abandoned. There's actually a little grain of truth in it - the part where he had woken up and his dad was gone - but the way he's telling it now has a lot more mysterious stains and unsettling noises.

Shitty loves performing like this, holding the whole structure of what he wants to say in his head but letting the actual words come out spontaneously. Sometimes he has fantasies that being in court could be like this, although, realistically, he's going to spend his law career writing very meticulous documents. Bitty and Lardo jump gratifyingly at the jumping bits and even Jack looks a little spooked at the end, until Lardo starts laughing.

"Okay," Bitty says, "Yes, that sounds pretty scary, but it doesn't hold a candle to _my_ most terrifying experience..."

Bitty, Shitty has to admit, is _really good_. He has to admit that because by the time Bitty gets to the end, the locked trunk holding not the other shoe, as Shitty half-expected, but, fuck, the _mirror_ , which is _not okay_ , Shitty is clutching Jack's arm, and Jack is maybe kind-of sort-of gripping him right back.

It has occurred to Shitty before that he and Bitty have a certain something in common, a deliberateness to how they present themselves and a willingness to calculate how it's received. In some of the wilder of Shitty's hotshot-lawyer fantasies, he convinces Bitty to follow him to law school and they go into practice together as an unstoppable pair, Bitty all sweetness and sympathy and Shitty fast-talking and hitting where it hurts.

It's a stupid daydream: Bitty, now toasting a marshmallow with a look of intense focus, is pretty obviously never going to be happy in a career where he isn't serving food to someone. And Shitty is grudgingly trying to make himself accept that he's never going to be on any kind of a team with these people again. If there is only ever this one last evening where he and Bitty are working together to give good campfire to their bros, that's still pretty good, Shitty tells himself. 

*

Bitty hands him a perfect golden marshmallow the third time one of Shitty's drops blazing into the fire.

"Vif if amaving," he gloats at Jack, who has begged off of marshmallows but is watching Shitty with obvious envy. "Oh, fuck, it'v ib my muftaff."

Lardo steals the stick and hands it back to Bitty for reloading. Jack sighs and says he might as well have one. They all look orange and soft and flawless in the firelight.

*

For a moment, Shitty has no idea what woke him up. It's pitch black in the tent and Jack has just made a small, startled noise. Then Shitty hears Lardo's voice, carrying over the space between the tents.

"Bitty," she's saying, "Bitty, c'mon, _do you hear that_."

Through three years of missing equipment and broken sticks on the road, Shitty has never heard Lardo sound alarmed like that. He sits up partway in his sleeping bag, listening.

Nothing. And then - a sort of grunting, snuffling noise. The clatter and grind of a rock against another rock.

Shitty very carefully scoots to the door of the tent and peeks out.

There's a bear rooting in the fire pit.

"I see it," Shitty hears Bitty whisper, "Maybe it'll go away?"

Shitty's seen the black bears at the Stone Zoo, seen them with Lardo, even. He's always liked the Stone Zoo better than Franklin Park even though it's so much further away, likes the wolves and the one-armed gibbon and the miserable yak. The bears always seemed sort of goofy through the glass wall.

Seen from a tent, this bear is monstrous. Campfire ghost stories are hopelessly inadequate preparation for the real horror of this bear.

"All the food is in the bear box," Bitty whispers, "I'm sure it'll just give up soon."

Jack elbows Shitty aside at the door of the tent, looks out, curses.

"No," Lardo hisses, "Dammit, I'm _menstruating_."

And the thing is, Shitty knows that's a myth, his paper about Sarah Palin appropriating Roosevelt had kind of detoured into women in the National Park Service, and the bear attack myth was too good to leave out. But it's one thing to know that sitting in Founder's and it's another thing entirely in the middle of the night while a bear the size of a small car is sniffing around a few yards from the period-having bro one loves.

Shitty is pretty much going to have to do something stupid.

"We shouldn't panic," Bitty says, voice high, clearly about to panic.

"You got my back?" Shitty whispers to Jack, and even with everything, he has time for a moment of pure happiness when Jack says "of course". Shitty feels around in the tent for his car keys. 

"Okay," Shitty yells, bursting out of the tent like a stripper out of a cake. "Everybody run for the car, 'cause I'm a motherfucking distraction!" He clicks his keys in the direction of the Volvo.

At first he thinks the bear isn't even going to acknowledge him. Is going to ignore him completely. Then, slowly, the head lifts and swings around.

It's not like in a movie; the bear's eyes don't catch the light and glow. They're featureless pits in its shadowed face.

He can still tell it's looking right at him.

Shitty has faced D-men with six inches on him, the LSATs, and Jack Zimmermann crying on the bathroom floor. He's never been so purely scared like this.

On the other hand, all that other shit has given him some practice at carrying on in adversity.

"Hasten forward quickly there!" Shitty yells in Bitty and Lardo's direction. "Hey, bear! Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?! You wanna fucking deconstruct the capitalist underpinnings of early conservationism?"

Jack, behind him, makes a sort of snorting noise. Shitty can feel him warm behind his shoulder, and, fuck, who needs to be scared of the damn bear, this is fucking epic.

A zipper noise. Shitty tears his eyes away from the bear's for a quick look: Bitty _finally_ squirms out of the other tent and reaches a hand down to Lardo.

The bear, also, starts to turn its head.

"Heeeey, I bet you want a pic-a-nic basket!" Shitty shouts immediately. Lardo is up and running hand in hand to the car with Bitty behind the bear. The bear starts to swing its head the other way, towards the car.

"Y - " Shitty starts, and coughs. Why the fuck did he not bring his air horn on this trip.

"Hey," Jack yells behind him. "Eyes on us, bear!"

The bear looks back at them.

"Do we have a plan?" Jack asks in Shitty's ear. Like the bear might overhear them.

Lardo and Bitty are yanking at the car doors, but, fuck, they're not opening. Shitty aims the clicker, tries again.

"Fuck, fuck," he hears Lardo saying.

The bear looks back towards the car.

"Okay," Shitty says, "We run, you break right?" He is pretty much back to being terrified again. Bitty has given up on the car and is inching towards the picnic table.

"Fuck," Jack says, "Go."

So Shitty goes, just throws himself from standing still into sprinting as hard as he can. It's dark and he's barefoot and it feels like the entire campsite is pointy gravel. He's pointing his keys at the car and clicking for all he's worth, legs pumping like crazy, and, there, Lardo's got the back door open, he can't turn and look for the fucking bear but Lardo is waving at him to come on, and he scrambles in.

"Bitty," Lardo yells, and Shitty's sitting up - Bitty's over by the picnic table holding a frypan and, where the fuck is Jack, what's he doing way over there, where the fuck is the BEAR.

Bitty's running for the car now, still clutching the frying pan, and Jack is running with grim determination and, shit, Shitty hears the growl before he sees it, the bear is behind Jack, moving like a fucking cheetah or something, closing fast.

"It just watched," Lardo says in a sob, "It just watched and then it - "

Bitty gets the front door open and is in. Shitty's holding the back door for Jack, but there's no way, and then Bitty slams his hand down on the horn, a sudden huge blare of noise, and the bear stumbles but Jack doesn't hesitate, dives headfirst into the car and Shitty's leaning past him to get the door and Bitty hits the horn again, viciously.

Jack is gasping for breath. The bear slams itself into the side of the car.

"Shit, shit," Lardo is moaning, and Bitty sounds the horn again. There's a horrible sort of metal noise underneath it and the bear is standing up now, looking in at them, pawing at the window. The light of the dome light finally reflecting in its soulless eyes.

"Camera," Shitty says, "Camera!" and there's Jack's camera up on the dashboard but Shitty's not even sure the fucking thing has a flash. "Oh!" Lardo says, and fishes a phone out of somewhere - Shitty's own phone, he realizes, and then he's aiming at the bear and stabbing the shutter button. The flash doesn't seem that bright in the lit car - Shitty is still squinting - but maybe combined with Bitty practically laying down on the horn, the bear has finally had enough. It grunts and drops down to all fours and trots off into the darkness.

There's a moment of - not silence, but nobody's talking. Jack is still panting and Lardo is breathing in little squeaks. Shitty is becoming aware that he is twisted weirdly, folded around Jack, that he himself is breathing hard.

"Ow," Jack says faintly. His head is muffled between Lardo's hip and the upholstery. "Oh," Lardo says, surprised like she hadn't quite realized he was there, and there's a moment of flailing while Jack squirms himself upright, while Lardo's breath gets stuttery.

"I'm. Sorry," Lardo gets out, and, no, fuck that, Shitty feels entirely justified shoving Jack's legs off of his lap and pulling Lardo onto it.

"Sweetheart," he murmurs into the curve of her skull, tucking her head under his chin, and she lets him, tense for a moment and then slumping into him.

Shitty is still wired - Shitty has spent the last decade of his life conditioning his body to take pain and adrenaline and go harder, and his body has nowhere near gotten the message yet that this is no longer required. So part of him wants to howl, or run some more, but he tries to take all of that and put it into a very effortful being still, a sort of engaged, active holding of Lardo. He closes his eyes. Opens them again: Jack and Bitty are staring at each other across the back of the driver's seat. Closes them again.

He feels Jack's arms come around him and Lardo both.

"So, Lardo, I outran a bear, eh?"

She makes a little sniffling noise. "It gave you a huge head start and still almost caught you."

"But it didn't," Jack says, and of course he's still wired too, Shitty can feel the thrum in his arms and hear it in his voice. And Bitty must feel it too, and it seems so unfair, suddenly, that Lardo's left out of this. And yet, it's also right somehow, the way all their vibrating energy is slowly damping out in her stillness.

"So we're spending the rest of the night in the car?" Bitty asks.

*

Spending the rest of the night in the car sounds obvious but becomes awkward when it stops being a punchline and they actually have to do it. Shitty and Jack lean themselves against opposite sides of the back seat, legs interlacing in the middle. Lardo stays with Shitty for awhile, between his legs, leaning back against him, until she says she's "going to give him more room" and climbs into the front. Probably she's fleeing from his boner, which had made its inevitable appearance as the fight-or-flight fled. Sometimes Shitty hates being a dude. But he'd had Lardo's back against his bare chest, her whole warm body tucked against him, wearing one pair of boxer briefs, one pair of shorts, and a tank top between the two of them, and he could have put his hands on her anywhere, so, yes: boner. Jack's ridiculous calves are a pretty good consolation prize, Shitty has skating muscles but Jack is something else. Always has been. The leg of Shitty's that's snugged between Jack's feels particularly safe, like it knows that it, at least, isn't going anywhere. Their leg hair is sort of pleasantly commingling; Jack's pretty furry. Lardo doesn't shave but her legs are practically hairless anyways. God, Shitty needs to sleep. But it's impossible, crammed in like this, some ridge of the door pressing into his spine. He wishes he could ask Bitty or Jack to sing to him except odds are that someone in the car, with their superior willpower or superior adaptability, is managing to sleep. Maybe they all three are, and Shitty realizes that's not so bad, if his people are sleepy and safe and he's awake and on guard, watching over them.

*

Shitty finally gets a little sleep as the sky is just starting to look faintly grey, and wakes up maybe an hour later to see Bitty stretching extravagantly and Lardo scrubbing at her eyes with her fists. Jack is just blinking awake too, rolling his neck unhappily.

"Okay, I'm gonna open the door," Shitty says.

He hadn't forgotten the bear, exactly, but it's shocking in a new way to see the dent in the panel and the ripped cut that has to be a claw mark. If the bear hadn't given up, it probably could have peeled the Volvo open like a pull-top can. Everyone stays close together and quiet while they pack up the tents and retrieve the coolers.

"...Falcs would probably add camping to the ban list," Jack says, once, to himself.

Jack asks for the first shift driving and Shitty's pretty spacey, he figures he'll sit in back and maybe doze a little more. He takes the other side though, Jack's side from the night, for variety. He doesn't think he's sleeping, but Jack and Lardo's conversation in the front seems to be happening in weird fits and starts.

" - my first thought once I calmed down," Jack says, "That I hadn't gotten a picture."

And Lardo answers " - recreate the feeling. That's why installation - "

*

Later, Bitty driving, the swerving must wake Shitty up.

"Would you really have hit it with a frypan?" Lardo is asking.

"If it had caught Jack," Bitty answers.

Shitty pries his eyelids open enough to look over at Jack, who sees him look.

"You sent me the long way," Jack says very quietly.

"Yeah," Shitty mumbles; this seems important, he should keep his eyes open for this. "You're faster. Best chance... I guess that's not very heroic, I mean, I love you, but - "

"Shitty," Jack interrupts, still very quiet. "You called the best play you saw, and trusted me. That's - " He reaches across the space between them and squeezes Shitty's hand, leaves his hand there as Shitty tumbles helplessly back into not-quite-sleep.

*

Still later, and this time Shitty is definitely awake, he thinks, he's just playing along with being asleep but really he's awake and could open his eyes and speak up any minute.

" - don't understand you," Bitty is saying to Jack. Jack must be driving again, Shitty's head isn't bouncing off the window. "Why is it hard for you, is it that offensive to know I - "

"What - _Bitty_ ," Jack says, and Shitty can definitely picture how he must be frowning, so he doesn't need to open his eyes to look. "I thought it was obvious how I felt about you."

"You told me, and I quote, 'nothing like that is ever going to happen'," Bitty says. "I thought you meant you wouldn't want it to."

"Bitty," Jack says again, sounding broken. "Bitty, no. I can't, but, fuck, of course I would want to."

"Really?" Bitty says, in a tiny voice. "You - "

"If I could have a second life I would want it with you," Jack says, and Bitty lets out a little gasp. "Sorry, I know that's too much, I'm no good at moderation - "

Bitty is still making little coughing sobs, like he might actually be crying, and Shitty thinks he should be a good bro and reach forward, squeeze his shoulder or something comforting, he's not sure why his hands are just heavy in his lap and aren't playing along with the part of his brain that's sure he's awake.

"No," Bitty gets it together to say, "Don't be sorry, god, _Jack_ ," and Shitty slides back into a confused dream where the Blackhawks have signed the bear as a new forward and Shitty and Lardo and Bitty are holding hands and watching anxiously from behind the glass as it sets up for a face-off against Jack.

"You couldn't come up with a better play?" Bitty says in the dream.

*

Shitty finally wakes up a little looking down into a plate of meatloaf.

"Is this - what." He looks around. Everyone else seems to have burgers and fries, and they're laughing. He's obviously missed something. But that's okay, if laughing at him is something Jack and Lardo and Bitty can all do together so happily, Shitty will sign up to be the butt of every joke forever.

He can't resist looking back and forth between Jack and Bitty a few more times as they eat. He guesses he has the answer now to his questions at Cedar Point, about whether something was wrong between them. And about Bitty being sad.

He's never really thought about it, Jack and Bitty, tries not to pair people up in his head who aren't actively making statements to that effect. But it's so fucking perfect now that he sees it, the way Bitty can create a space and the way Jack needs one where he can just be. The way Bitty gets all twisted up and Jack is endlessly solid. It's so much better than Jack plus Lardo - well, okay, Shitty loves flipping and turning all the angles, he is pretty much always interested in any way they might be 2+2 or 3+1 - but Jack and Bitty with the big house, hosting Christmas, that's so good it should really be real.

When Lardo excuses herself to the restroom Shitty follows her, slips in behind her as she opens the door to the one-room toilet.

"Bro," she says, disapproving. "I need to empty my moon cup."

"Just, quickly," Shitty says, "Jack and Bitty - mutually enamored but Jack is cockblocking them?"

Lardo furrows her eyebrows at him. "I thought you had decided not to know about that."

It takes Shitty aback - it doesn't seem right to say you _decided not to know_ something, deciding implies knowing - but, whatever, that's not really the point.

"You know I try to let everybody tell their own story," he says, a little uncomfortably. "But."

Lardo waits.

"It's a stupid story," Shitty says. "I'd Rather Be Alone And Sad, by Jack Zimmermann? Remainder that, Amazon self-publishing doesn't even want that."

"Bro," Lardo says. She's shaking her head at him.

"Bitty's story would be better," Shitty says. "Do you even know why - "

Lardo sighs. "Get out of here, Shits, or you're gonna see something you can't unsee."

Shitty goes, although not because he's scared of Lardo's moon cup; blood coming peacefully out of a normal place sounds pretty mundane as compared with, say, a guy taking a skate to the neck.

Jack and Bitty don't seem to have sorted out their shit in his absence; Jack is balancing his knife across his glass, Bitty is poking at his phone.

"I got the check," is all Jack says.

*

Shitty thinks about it some more in the car. It just seems like such a fucking waste, no Jack-and-Bitty when that is something there could actually _be_. Shitty-and-Lardo, that's something Shitty only gets to have in his head, but Bitty and Jack - god, Shitty wants so badly to _see_ that. Not in a sexy way, although, whatever, but, fuck, he just thinks they'd be so fucking happy. Bitty would beam and Jack would glow shyly and, damn. Seattle is just a couple hundred miles away now; they came so close to getting all the way across the country without Shitty having a clue Jack-and-Bitty had ever even been a question. A question Bitty had asked, apparently. Shitty wants to know everything about how that happened - where, and when. The kitchen? The rink? He should have been the first one they told, all pleased with themselves, and he knows it's gross to be sad for himself, but he's been struggling with the whole graduating-and-losing-everybody thing for _months_ , and he'd thought he'd at least finally put everything on the list that he was going to miss. But now there's this, too, if you can miss something that never happened, and Shitty knows all too well you can. Maybe it would have been better to make it to Seattle clueless.

It's just the worst, most non-beauty, weaksauce end to a story: "and then nobody lived happily ever after". And every turn of the wheels brings it closer. 

Shitty is almost relieved when central Washington turns out to be a series of long stretches of road work, the highway condensing again and again to one lane where they crawl along between tractor-trailers. It's like the road itself is dragging its feet on delivering them to Seattle. Nobody seems to have anything left to talk about; Shitty realizes he's falling down on his job of court jester, but - maybe it's okay if this is how it ends. Not with a bang but a whimper, not in fire or ice really either, just a long last exhale of the gas tank into exhaust, a few last hours that won't be the ones they remember in pictures later.

Maybe Jack and Bitty already didn't happen as long ago as Shitty and Lardo, and Shitty is just finally catching up with the trip they've all been taking.

*

He ends up with the last turn behind the wheel, through mountains then coming down from the mountains into the lights of Seattle. It's evening by then, after dinner at another diner where Bitty doesn't even bother to critique the pie. It's probably beautiful in the daylight; Shitty guesses he'll see it if he does end up driving back.

The highway is counting down like sand through an hourglass, like a timer on a bomb. And then - a hotel. Words. Some of them might be "goodbye."

A long, low bridge across the water. No music - nobody bothered to plug back in after dinner. Shitty wonders what Bitty would pick for this.

Seattle proper, going by too fast on either side.

The very end of interstate 90, and they did it, they drove the whole way. It doesn't feel like much of a triumph. Shitty holds his breath: he's exiting on to some surface street.

And, _fuck this shit_. Shitty's still behind the wheel. _He doesn't have to stop driving_.

Bitty and Lardo are saying something to each other in the back seat, but Shitty ignores it. Jack, in the corner of his eye, looks thoughtful. Trusting, maybe.

Shitty ignores the GPS. He drives, at random. Drives into the night.

*

He doesn't know what he's looking for until he sees it. They're back out of the city again now, driving right along the coast. Shitty can't explain why the little pullout and sign announcing beach access finally seems like an okay place to stop, when nothing else has, until he's killing the engine and then it's obvious.

"Coast to coast," he says roughly; it doesn't sound like his normal voice at all. "That's how we know to stop. Hitting ocean."

"'Swawesome," Bitty says, opening the back door. "The Pacific Ocean. Wow, I can smell it."

They follow his lead, out of the car, down the weathered, half-buried boards that make stairs down to the beach, holding up phones for light. There's a little moonlight, occasional sudden shadows from a car on the road up above.

They were the only car in the pullout and they're the only people on the beach. Shitty can't quite pretend they're Lewis and Clark - there are city lights in the distance - but that's an imperialist narrative anyways. Shitty figures in ten or fifty years this will round down to a story about his bros from college, but right now in the dark they feel like the three great loves of his life, and he wishes he could be in everyone's head at once, to know what Bitty's smelling in the salty air, what colors Lardo sees out on the water, whether Jack wants to run down the sand or just dig in his toes.

Bitty kicks out of his shoes.

He takes off his shirt like a girl, crossing his arms at the hem; folds the shirt neatly, on top of his shoes, then hooks his thumbs into his waistband and takes everything else off at once, stepping out and folding those too. He doesn't speak a single word of explanation, but he seems to be completely unselfconscious about it, just calm, calm and assured, a little bit proud, chin high, like flustered-Bitty got left behind on the road somewhere.

He's gorgeous in the moonlight; it's not like Shitty needs to put his hands all over that, but he could be a sculpture or something. A picture you could hang in Shitty's part of the museum, where everyone is beautiful and heroic.

Bitty looks at Lardo and smiles. Lardo smiles back, and now she's the one peeling out of her clothes and stepping out of her flip-flops. If Bitty looks regal, Lardo looks divine. Her perfect skin, the wild curls between her legs - Shitty feels completely blown away, and yet somehow, in the reverent, almost sacred hush of the moment, he's not overwhelmed by lust the way he was when Lardo took off her shirt in the campground. For once even his lizard-brain knows to be quiet.

Lardo takes Bitty's hand, and they walk down to the water. For a crazy minute Shitty thinks they might just keep on walking out on to the surface of the water, they seem that ethereal, but, no, their feet sink in like real feet. Bitty does a little dance, toe to toe, as they step deeper, and ducks his head a little, holds himself more like Bitty than a fairytale prince.

Jack, next to Shitty, makes a fond little sound. Jack drops his pants before he takes off his shirt, and now he's padding down to the water too. It's weird to think that he looks more human than Lardo and Bitty, but basically Shitty has been watching him pinnacle-of-athletic-perfection around for four years and he's used to it.

Lardo and Bitty are in up to their knees now. Shitty has a moment when he's not sure if he wants to join them - maybe it's everyone else's turn to be naked, for once? But then Lardo looks back over her shoulder, and, fuck, no way is Shitty sitting this out. He strips as fast as he ever has and trots down to the water.

It's about as warm as the Faber ice, but Shitty's feet have been sore since he ran for his life barefoot, so it's kind of nice. He can't help yeeping a little as it gets to the backs of his knees, and for a moment he's worried he's ruined the magical ritual nudity or whatever it is they're doing, but it's maybe a good change, because after that nobody's talking, still, but they're all a little giggly, trading glances and little splashes. No big horseplay, or touching, just friendly acknowledgement; it's relaxed, like they've all left the drama on the beach with their clothes, like Shitty was right all along that it worked like that.

"Grow sweeter each season," he finds himself singing under his breath. It's another dad-music song, some band he's never heard of, but here they are, walking on the ocean, where for a little while everything's better and everything's safe.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA PSA: Never run from a bear. Follow your local rangers' guidelines in the event of an animal encounter. ::grin::


	5. Further Than Your Own Backyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: mention of menstruation. Finally earns the mature rating.

*

They're sandy and salt-sticky when they finally struggle back into their clothes. Shitty wonders if the lightness can come with them when they leave, but the silence feels thicker when they get back in the car. Shitty remembers bringing home rocks and shells from the beach at the Cape, how they were never so colorful and magical when he got them home.

*

They backtrack to the hotel Bitty had found for them. The awkwardness just keeps getting heavier; clearly Shitty needs to break it before someone else does in a potentially more damaging way.

"I call Bitty," Shitty says when they get their keycards. "Team Manscaping. That okay with you, Team Wild Bush?" Sure, they've been sharing a locker room, but it was always possible before that not everybody had noticed everybody. Shitty figures that's pretty much done with though.

Jack turns red.

"When you say 'team manscaping'," Lardo asks, "Is that a _plan_ , or - "

"Just a descriptor!" Shitty says brightly. He's pretty sure Lardo and Jack aren't going to have an explosive falling-out while he's off with Bitty; that should get them through to the morning at least.

*

"So hey," Shitty says, perching on the lid of the toilet while Bitty goes through the many steps of his full evening routine. "About you and Jack, I didn't know until, like, just now."

Bitty turns, halfway through wiping something greenish off his forehead. "Really?"

"Yeah, so, I'm - " Shitty tries to think through exactly what he wants to say here. "Not sorry if I put you in an awkward position inviting you along, because you could have said no? But sorry if I could have had your back better somehow, because, fuck, that sucks."

Bitty sighs. "It's better than when I thought I'd fallen for another straight boy? Except not, because _he's sad about it too_ , and I can't fix it." He redoubles his attack on his forehead, like that, at least, he can do something about.

Shitty sighs too. "Yeah, four years in the you-can't-actually-fix-Jack club," he agrees, and then wants to smack his hand over his mouth because what if Bitty thinks he was trying to, like, stake a prior claim, or one-up him, but Bitty just sticks out his less-goopy fist like he's totally happy to have company in that club. Shitty bumps it, of course.

"Not that he's broken," Bitty adds, splashing water on his face, "I just wish he was wrong and it could work somehow."

"It can't because hockey?" Shitty realizes he's been assuming, which, fuck, this is exactly why he doesn't do hypothetical narratives, it's too easy to lose track of what he actually knows.

"He didn't spell it out," Bitty says glumly. "But what else, really."

He starts packing up his little bottles and Shitty gets out so he can have personal bathroom time.

"But not even between playoffs and training camp?" Shitty calls, trying to decide whether one of the beds is springier. "Like, a limited-term thing."

"Hold on," Bitty says, then, "I did not, uh, try to negotiate," when he comes out. "Wouldn't that be kind of disrespectful?"

"Bro, I'm so glad I'm leaving the Haus in your hands," Shitty says. "But - I don't know. With Jack, you kind of have to push. Or, not _push_ , but - what are you doing?"

Bitty freezes where he's drawing back the covers of the other bed. "Going to sleep?"

"C'mon," Shitty says, holding up the covers of the bed he's in. "Cuddles."

"... okay," Bitty says, and climbs in.

"So Jack," Shitty says, once he's gotten Bitty settled on his shoulder, "His first answer is always no, to _everything_ , but then if you keep reminding him, sometimes it'll trickle past the defensive perimeter and he'll warm up to it."

"Hm," Bitty says, or maybe "mm". He fits so neatly in the curve of Shitty's arm, totally different from snuggling Jack.

"I was so proud of him for doing hazeapalooza," Shitty says. "That he got to the point where he felt comfortable doing that, and wanted to have the experience, and - yeah."

"Thought you said you didn't know he'd skipped it," Bitty says.

"Well, obviously I _said_ that," Shitty says, "But, I mean, think about it. We were frogs together, I was - "

"I am from Georgia," Bitty interrupts, "I believe I'm familiar with the notion of a polite fiction." His accent is always strongest when he's talking about home; Jack does the same thing sometimes, get him to mention his family and his next 'sorry' comes out 'soorrey'. Lardo only ever picks up a secondhand Vietnamese accent when she's been talking _to_ her family, never _about_ them; Shitty himself has been speaking in an implausible, exaggerated mix of Harvard and Southie on purpose since he went to Andover, which almost no one ever calls him on. (Lardo had, early on.)

Bitty sighs, re-focusing Shitty's wandering brain. "You're kind of tempting me to try to wait for him," Bitty says, "Which I know is crazy, he might never - but - "

Shitty sighs too. "Oh, padawan. You could not mean to and find yourself doing it anyways," he says. "Hypothetically."

"Is that - but - " Bitty's hand finds Shitty's arm and squeezes. Hm, Shitty might have sounded a little bitter there.

"I don't blame her at all," Shitty says, because he wants to be clear about that. "She told me the second time she ever talked to me that she was probably queer and wasn't looking to date dudes. And at the time I was just like, yes, cool, she was the fifth person to come out to me that week and I was on a roll of supportiveness. Didn't even hit me until later that I was, uh. Disappointed."

"... I'm still confused," Bitty says.

"You didn't know she dates ladies?"

"No, sure," Bitty says. "I met, um, Emma? But I really had the impression - "

"She hooks up with dudes?" Shitty clarifies. "And then never sees them again."

"Huh," Bitty says slowly. "So is that why - "

"Lots of reasons, Bits," Shitty says, suddenly needing the conversation to change. The asshole part of his brain has Thoughts about how, if they're in Seattle and escape is possible and he might hardly see Lardo again anyways, he should see if she'd hook up with him. Sometimes the easiest way to keep the asshole part quiet is just to stay away from topics it has opinions about. Or stuff pie in his face.

"Let's get back to Jack liking you," he says, and he can feel Bitty's little full-body shiver of delight.

"He _does_ ," Bitty says, and it occurs to Shitty that if he hadn't dragged them on this road trip Bitty might not ever have even known that. Shitty feels a sort of warm satisfaction about being part of their story - step one, road trip, step three, he gets to give the wedding toast. He just needs to figure out what's in step two there.

"You should keep talking to him," Shitty says. Even if Jack decides he'd rather fly home than be in Shitty's car - well, that would suck, but it's not the biggest thing he would give or give up for Jack and Bitty. Shitty falls asleep before he decides what that would be.

*

"So, before or after he moved into the Haus?"

Jack looks over at Shitty, then back at the washer where their combined laundry is getting sudsy.

"I think after, but," Shitty squints, "Right after. Mid-October. October 15th, Dear Jack's Diary, am officially in love with Eric Bittle, still not King."

Jack looks back at Shitty. "Is this a conversation you're having with yourself, or am I invited?"

Shitty grins. "By all _means_ , correct me."

Jack is blushing a little. "You're not - far off."

"Ha!" Shitty says. "Even in my complete ignorance, I still apparently knew. Enough to figure it out in retrospect anyways. Jack, this is worth like a thousand best friend points."

"Okay," Jack says, "Sure. Points."

"And now I would like to reclaim them for a free shot," Shitty says, smacking Jack in the back of the head. "Why the fuck have you been pining all year when you could have been rocking his world?"

"He was my _teammate_ ," Jack says, sounding vaguely appalled. "And I'm not coming out, and, look, I've seen guys literally fall asleep at my dad's dinner parties, NHL rookies basically play, eat, and try not to collapse, so - "

"But," Shitty starts, and then Lardo is holding the laundromat door open for Bitty and his large paper bags.

"Four exciting coffees!" Bitty announces, "And four intriguing pastries, and, um, egg wrap thingies, if you love protein and hate - uh - let's just stick with loving protein."

Jack cuffs him very gently on the back of the head and takes one of the bags.

It's a weird echo of Shitty's move on Jack, a minute ago, and Shitty muses on that while he tries his carefully-cut quarters of pastries. As in, if Jack's friendship with Shitty is the closest thing he's had to a functional relationship, what does that say about his sealage of the dealage with Bitty, viz. the lack thereof.

*

Once the laundry is dry and folded (Bitty, Jack) or stuffed back into bags haphazardly (Shitty, Lardo), Lardo announces that they're taking Bitty to Pike Place Market and cruelly preventing him from buying more than six jars of jam. Shitty thinks that's a lot until Bitty is making an impassioned case that fruit butter and preserves are both not jam and should not count against his total, and then he just admires Lardo for sticking to her guns.

Pike Place Market is pretty great - there are guys throwing fish, which is totally a career Shitty would like to look into if law school is a bust, a socialist bookshop, colorful tulips that require Jack and Lardo to have a five-minute argument over whether flower pictures can ever not be trite, and the original Starbucks, where Jack actually volunteers for a selfie with Bitty. (Okay, so, yeah, Shitty's pretty much had his head up his ass to have not caught on that this guy is gone on Bitty.) Lardo keeps them moving when Bitty wants to get bogged down in sampling pistachio flavors or Shitty needs prying out of that bookstore. Shitty wonders if they're getting on her nerves but she seems pretty content riding herd on them.

It's not a new thought, that if they were wolves and wolves actually had dominance hierarchies, Lardo would be their alpha. Shitty had once gotten very hung up on this while stoned, because how could it not be Jack, Jack is the Captain, or was, then. But Jack, Shitty had realized, was mostly only a leader in the context of the pre-set objective of hockey, the same way Shitty was for performative festivity. Lardo's management of them, on the other hand, seems to be pretty context-flexible. Shitty sometimes wonders whether she more like makes master plans or just solves whatever problem is most prominent, like, "car co-occupants smell rank: laundry".

From the market, she takes them to the Chihuly Museum, where she has another argument with Jack over why semi-abstract glass flowers might be legitimate art in a way that real flowers are not. Shitty loves the little furrow between her eyebrows as she stalks around, the way she'll unselfconsciously lie down in the middle of a gallery or turn herself half-sideways to look at something.

"You guys like this stuff?" she asks. Bitty's the most enthusiastic, of course, but Jack and Shitty nod too. "My fucking 3D Media prof," Lardo says, "Had the nerve to tell me I only thought Chihuly was art because women are attracted to bright colors."

"Ew," Shitty says, "Seriously?"

"Even at Samwell," Lardo says. "I mean - a bunch of these really are pointless, but, then - look at this," she says. "That's not just pretty colors." It's a sort of giant squiggly tree which is, Lardo tells them, apparently asking a question about natural forms and scale as a component of decoration, or something, Shitty has to admit that after awhile he mostly just watches the way she draws it in the air with her hands while she talks about it. Jack seems to be following; he tilts his head obligingly when she points out an angle he needs to look at it from, and smiles at her when she's not looking almost as much as Shitty does.

Bitty keeps shooting wistful little glances up at the Space Needle, which the outdoor sculpture garden is more or less underneath. When Lardo is finally done scrutinizing, Jack buys them tickets and they queue for the elevator. (Shitty gets Lardo to give him an explanation of why the crumpled, colorful bullshit of the Experience Music Project is not even worth looking at but crumpled colorful glass is. It's like everything he had missed at that Gehry building in Chicago.)

The view is pretty awesome - Seattle all spread out, and Mt. Rainier lurking in the background like a ghost (or maybe some sort of city-life voyeur). Shitty has a minor fit of panic when he realizes they're _at the top of a major landmark_ and thus someone is probably going to make some sort of confession or dramatic decision, but the most dramatic thing that happens is that Bitty's phone runs out of charge while he's playing around with a panorama app.

"You did good," Lardo says, appearing at Shitty's elbow while Jack is hilariously trying to figure out whether his phone can give some sort of electronic mouth-to-mouth to Bitty's. "With this trip, I mean."

"It's not over yet," Shitty says automatically. "Wait, shit, is it over? Are you leaving?"

"Gah," Lardo says. "Would I have cared if y'all did laundry if I was?"

"It could have been a public service," Shitty says. He puts his arm over her shoulders, carefully, and turns them a little so they're looking out at Seattle. "Lot of people out there probably don't appreciate, uh, bro-dor."

Lardo's mouth twitches a little; she won't admit it, but she's a giant sucker for bad bro puns.

"We'd better get Bits plugged in," she says.

*

"I just can't believe you've never had sushi," Shitty is saying to Bitty.

Bitty shrugs. "I don't know if we even have it in Madison? Not really Coach's thing, in any case."

"But," Shitty argues.

"And I pretty much only go out with the team?"

"This is tragic," Shitty says. "I should have been taking you up to Boston once a month."

Bitty is so much fun to feed - first there's a long romantic-comedy segment of Jack tenderly folding Bitty's hand around chopsticks and failing to convey any useful instruction, or maybe Shitty means romantic-sexy: by the time Jack has his arm around Bitty for a better angle Shitty's having a little bit of a pottery-scene-in-Ghost moment and it's probably for the best that Lardo shoos Jack off and gives some practical tips. And then there's the actual food. Shitty has just a moment of concern that Bitty's going to go stereotypical-small-town-Southern boy over the idea of raw fish, but that very rapidly becomes ridiculous, because Bitty, as it turns out, will cheerfully try anything they order. Raw fish? Crunchy soft-shell crab? Sea urchin? Salmon roe?

"This is amazing," he says around a mouthful of yellowtail, and again for eel, and salmon, and tobiko with a raw quail egg yolk. "And, just, the colors, so pretty, and the neat little rolls, and _that's_ just adorable."

Shitty has possibly ordered them a roll topped with avocado and striped with white and dark sauces that looks like a humped, wiggling caterpillar. Bitty gleefully yoinks the head and stuffs it into his mouth.

Shitty and Lardo and Jack end up making a list of all the kinds of food they've ever gone out for in Boston that Bitty's never had.

"I don't see a way around it," Shitty concludes, "You're going to have to come up and visit me, we have to do something about this." Jack and Lardo make similar faces that Shitty can't quite read.

There's a weird moment back at the hotel when they're splitting up for the night - first a moment when everyone pauses at once, a sort of four-way standoff. Then Bitty starts to reach out to Jack, and Jack steps back, but only barely, and then Lardo coughs, and Bitty turns to her instead. Jack falls in with Shitty and they re-shuffle their stuff accordingly. 

Jack is pretty clearly not in the mood to be bugged, but Shitty can't let it go entirely.

"Really?" he just asks. "You're really just turning your back on that?"

"It's not a choice," Jack sighs, "It's acceptance of the facts. Come to bed, I'm tired."

At least Shitty gets to be the little spoon, that's always nice.

*

Shitty's list of food to which Bitty needs to be introduced:

dim sum  
 ~~Indian~~ (with half the team at the buffet that time we were asked to never come back)  
Ethiopian (Jack neither! seriously you people!)  
shabu-shabu  
raw bar  
Afghani (Helmand pumpkin will change your life Bitty)  
stuff Lardo's family makes (YES)  
 ~~weird Vietnamese shit~~ the delicious less-known cuisine of Lardo's people which Americans are inexplicably weird about except for Bitty, apparently, seriously, Bitty, you would eat duck embryo? you know you're allowed to say no, right, who do you think you're impressing with this "you would try literally anything Lardo said was good" business?

*

It's not until Seattle is in the rearview mirror that it really sinks in for Shitty - they're all still in the car. Nobody fled. He isn't sure what exactly it means - probably not as much as he wishes it means - but still, here they are, the whole country in front of them to cross again.

He knows, rationally, it's just a few extra days. But that's like, one more game. It feels like anything could happen.

*

"County _line_ ," Bitty calls out, and looks expectantly at Lardo.

"It hasn't even been an hour since we got going," she objects, but Bitty just raises his eyebrows at her until she gives in. "Okay, Jack, next stopping point," she says. Shitty looks back and forth between them curiously but nobody volunteers an explanation.

The next exit turns out to be a gas station and a few picnic tables.

"Snack run," Lardo says, pointing to Shitty, so he follows her, but he sees Bitty motioning Jack towards the picnic tables, and, okay, yes, Shitty is all wrapped up in their narrative now to the point of being a nosy motherfucker. He asks for the bathroom key and goes back outside.

" - wanted to make this clear," Bitty is saying, voice carrying in the mountain air. "Even if we can't be together, I would rather have one night than nothing." He swallows. "I'd rather kiss you once than never even know."

Jack's eyes are wide and Bitty takes one step towards him, where he's sitting on the edge of one of the picnic tables, and then Jack is reeling him in the rest of the way, cupping Bitty's head in his hands and kissing him. Bitty's hands wrap around the back of Jack's neck, and, oh, Shitty feels it in his own heart.

"Yeah, that's why we stopped," Lardo says from behind him.

"How - but - yesterday - "

"Had a deal with Bits," Lardo says, "You were all freaked out about Seattle, so he, uh, delayed."

She looks quietly pleased with herself and Shitty is all warm in the heart again. He octopuses Lardo in a giant hug. "That is the sweetest motherfucking thing..." he's muttering.

"So give them some space and come buy your damn sunflower seeds," Lardo says, but Shitty can't resist one more look over his shoulder as she tows him back inside. Bitty's holding Jack's hand pressed to his face, his eyes closed.

*

Suddenly it's Lardo and Shitty in the back, Jack driving while Bitty's leaning across the gearshift with a hand on his thigh, or Lardo and Shitty trading off driving while Jack and Bitty hold hands in the back and stare at each other hot-eyed. This is exactly what Shitty thinks should be happening and yet it makes things in the car - not exactly awkward, but _charged_ , maybe, like they're at all times only minutes away from spontaneous sexual combustion.

Shitty still sort of feels like he's driving without GPS - Bitty and Jack seem to be all set to fall into bed together, but what happens after that? How does he get everybody what they want, and what even is that, beyond the obvious immediate?

*

"Say I open this ketchup bottle," he says at lunch, "And a genie comes out. We each get one wish, what is it?"

"There are four of us," Bitty points out.

"Yes," Shitty says, "Genies can come in sizes other than three. C'mon."

"Stanley Cup," Jack says promptly. "I mean, uh, I guess I should say world peace or something - "

Shitty shakes his head. "It makes me so happy that hockey is genuinely the wish of your heart," he says, "Otherwise I think I'd have to fucking kill you. Bitty?"

"Oh, goodness," Bitty says. "I don't know. Can _I_ say world peace?"

"No," Shitty says, "No world peace. Come on, there's no way that would turn out well anyways."

"If it's an evil genie we shouldn't wish," Lardo says, "But - to have a sculpture in the permanent collection outside at the deCordova; that's specific, at least."

"Yeah," Shitty says, "Genie would have to work to monkeys-paw that up. The deCordova, really, not, like, MoMA?"

Lardo shrugs. "I just like it," she says. "How about you?"

" _World peace_ ," Shitty says obnoxiously. "No, I don't know, I think Bitty and I have kind of dull, domestic aspirations compared with you guys, eh Bits?"

Bitty shrugs and blushes and says something about law school hardly being dull and domestic, and Shitty ponders the question of since when he himself has ever felt too embarrassed to say something.

*

"If the world was ending tomorrow," Shitty says somewhere in Idaho. "Or, like, in a week."

"Go back to Seattle and smash Chihulys," Lardo says, her eyes lighting up. "Oh, come on, it would be _amazing_ , you know half the pleasure of glass is awareness of the potential to shatter."

"For the record I find it disturbing that you want to destroy things you admire," Shitty says.

"If it's the end of the world," Lardo says. "Oh, and fuck a lot."

Shitty jerks the wheel and they swerve a little.

"I'm with Lardo," Bitty chimes in from the backseat. "Except about the Chihulys."

"Well," Jack says reasonably, "I guess there wouldn't be time for the Stanley Cup."

There's a moment of quiet. Shitty checks the mirror - Jack and Bitty are making fuck-me faces at each other again.

"Entirely unrelatedly," Shitty says, "Are we looking for a campground, or have we - "

"Definitely given up," Lardo says, and at the same time Jack and Bitty both say "motel". Shitty grins to himself.

*

"If you were on a desert island - "

"Are you fishing for something?" Lardo asks, setting down her club sandwich.

"Maybe I'm just making conversation," Shitty says.

"Yeah, that's usually a monologue," Lardo says.

"I'm building a case," Shitty says, a little stung. It must show in his face; Lardo reaches over and squeezes his hand.

"Not a complaint, bro," and Shitty feels brave: flips his hand and captures hers. She lets him.

Jack and Bitty are hip-to-hip on the other bench, not so much eating as staring at each other's mouths.

"Is it better to be 50% wrong about like five things or right about one," Shitty asks, meaning it rhetorically, but Lardo scoffs.

"That's just math," she says, and, okay.

"Soon," Shitty promises. Her hand is small and calloused and Shitty hates that he has to give it back to eat his mac & cheese.

*

Bitty snatches one of the keys out of Jack's hand, tosses it to Shitty, and is towing Jack off by the wrist the second he's done checking them in.

"I'm just going to - get some ice," Shitty tells Lardo, once they're dropping their bags in the other room. It's the weakest possible excuse, there isn't even an ice bucket, whatever. Shitty wanders down along the row of doors and eventually finds a vending machine, only to realize he left his wallet in the room.

On the way back he gives in to the real reason he's out here and stops outside Jack and Bitty's door and leans in real close.

" - you have to tell me what you want," Jack is saying, sounding wrecked, and Bitty, frantic, says "everything, _everything_ ," and, damn. Shitty would love to just stand here like a creeper for the next ten to thirty minutes but there are other cars in the parking lot and getting caught would not only be awkward but could potentially interrupt Jack and Bitty and that's obviously not on.

"Is it wrong to be turned on by my best bro banging my best bro?" he asks Lardo, back in their room. She's sitting on one of the beds, inspecting her fingernails, which she likes to keep trimmed down to nothing.

Lardo cocks her head at him. "You could have made a move on either of them at any point," she says.

"Whoa, no," Shitty says, flinging himself onto the other bed. "I mean, they are fantabulous, but, like, together."

"I don't know if they'd go for you together," Lardo says, and Shitty realizes she's teasing him.

"I just have a touch of perversion in my compersion," Shitty says, and Lardo gives him a little salute because even she has to acknowledge that was a good line.

"Okay, _yeah_ ," she says. She closes her eyes and tips her head back a little. "I would watch the hell out of them," she admits, voice low. Lardo getting turned on by Jack and Bitty is even better than the fact of them; it goes straight to Shitty's dick.

"Jack's hands," Shitty says dangerously.

"I bet they're just - grinding," Lardo says, smiling a little to herself. Shitty's almost never seen her in a mood like this - she'll point out guys at Haus parties sometimes, admiring lacrosse forearms and rugby shoulders, he's never seen her _with_ one of them. Her girlfriends have been musicians and poets disinclined to hang out with hockey players, Shitty's hardly seen her with any of them either.

"Nah," Shitty says, a beat too late. It's like they're suddenly playing some sort of high stakes improv game; he has no idea where it's going but it's making him breathless. Also, whoops, he blocked. "I mean, yeah," he corrects himself, "At first, but - Bitty's all mouth, right?"

Lardo still has her eyes closed, but she shifts a little on the bed. "Lot of Jack to put his mouth on."

Shitty's first thought is "where would _you_ start", but that's maybe over a line in the wrong direction. "He's impulsive," Shitty says instead, "He'll go for, uh. Whatever he sees first." Which is maybe not even true - Bitty's "everything" had sounded pretty determined - but it could be true. If Shitty was touching Lardo, that's probably how it would go.

"Jack's okay with that," Lardo says, "At first," and she brings her hand up to her neck and runs it all down her front to her stomach. Shitty feels like his face must be on fire. Maybe a few other places too.

Lardo opens her eyes and looks right at him.

"Bitty's open to direction," Shitty says. It comes out quiet and intense.

Lardo blinks, her eyes dark and hot, and beckons to him. Shitty is across the space between the beds in an instant, then stops hard so he doesn't slam into her. His face ends up about an inch from hers. His hand is planted on the bed somewhere down near her hip.

Lardo's eyes flutter closed again.

"Well?" she says. "Kiss me already." And Shitty - Shitty basically falls onto her face-first, whatever, it's not like he ever said he was good at this.

He gets her lips, though. He pulls back to where it's gentle and exploratory. He's always wondered how his mouth would fit with hers. He's never seriously thought he would find out.

Lardo makes a soft sound into Shitty's mouth. She's leaning on one arm, just like he is; she brings the other hand up to his shoulder. It's a light touch, tentative. How can she not know she can have anything she wants from him? Shitty moves his free hand to her shoulder, firmly, possessively, to show her how it's done. She's wearing a tank and he rubs his thumb against her bare skin. God, he wants to touch her everywhere. She's licking into his mouth now, and Shitty is sort of up on his knees over her; he wants to get closer.

"Lardo," he says, breaking away from the kiss. "Sweetheart."

He's still got his hand on her shoulder; he doesn't miss the way she tenses.

"Can we just be a bro banging a bro?" she asks in a whisper.

It hits Shitty like ice water; he has to close his eyes. He wants so badly to say yes so he can go back to kissing her.

But it's one lie he can't tell.

"You're never just a bro to me," he says, and hangs his head. "I - fuck."

Lardo takes her hand off his shoulder. "Wait - "

"No," Shitty says. He sits back so he's not hovering over her. "I've been playing the blurt-everything-out guy so long, I wanna do it for real for once. I am _crazy about you_ ," he says, "And I know you don't want that. I have never once for a moment since I met you not been constantly aware that you're a girl, and, fuck, I know you don't want _that_."

"Shitty," she says. He's looking away; he can't stand to see her reaction.

"You talk about wanting to be Superman and I picture you in the Supergirl skirt," he says. "I'm a creep and an asshole and I have tried so hard to not inflict that on you. But I can't - I can't have your tongue in my mouth and just play along with whatever - god, _did_ you have a crush on Jack?"

"Jack?" Lardo says, sounding baffled. "I - no. Fuck, come here, asshole." She scoots over and pats the bed next to her.

Shitty isn't sure he should still get to sit next to her like he hasn't just ripped everything open. But he still basically wants to do everything Lardo tells him, so he sits. They end up shoulder to shoulder, leaning back against the glued-to-the-wall headboard.

Lardo takes his hand. "Look, before anything else, I love you, okay? I know I don't say that as much as you do. But I do."

"But not, like - "

"Fuck," Lardo says, "I don't know. I don't want to be a girlfriend. I don't want to be a girl's girlfriend, even, I keep trying that, but I'm not into it."

"I'm sorry," Shitty says, "I know I was kind of - wrapped up in my own shit this year, with everything, when you broke up - "

"I ended up talking a lot to Bitty," Lardo says, shaking her head a little. "It was - around the time he talked to Jack. So we were all 'can't have what I want' vs 'don't know what I want'. You weren't really missing much."

"I always want to be there for both of you though," Shitty says. "Even if you're mutually pining for Jack."

"I have never - UGH," she says, and he can see her realize he's just kidding. They grin at each other. "I just want to be Jack sometimes. Not really, because then I'd have to be Jack and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but - "

"It'd be easier to be a bro banging bros," Shitty fills in.

" _Yes_ ," Lardo says, drawing it out, "Yeah. Guys always act like it's so great I'm like one of the guys, but then they think I'll be all girly once they get me alone. Sometimes just the leg hair freaks them out."

"You barely have leg hair," Shitty says, running his hand up her leg, and then stops. "Uh, is this okay?"

"I still kind of want to bang you," Lardo says, and, okay, it's not back to earlier levels of tension, but the room definitely feels a little warmer.

Shitty strokes up and down her leg, from her ankle to the hem of her shorts.

"I'm still at your service," he says, a little nervously.

"Dregs," Lardo says out of nowhere. "You didn't want to kiss your crushes?"

"I had no idea you were on the table," Shitty says, then, "Fuck," when that conjures up an all too vivid mental image. He thinks he's probably bright red. "I mean - were you?"

"I liked being all twinned up with Bitty," Lardo says, which isn't quite an answer. "We thought you and Jack would maybe come dance with us at least."

"I could dance with you now," Shitty says. He's still got his hand on Lardo's leg. "You wanna dance with me?"

"What kind of dance you dance so late at night," Lardo says in a ridiculous accent, but Shitty can't laugh, because she's also slinging her leg over him to sit in his lap, facing him.

"Hi," he says stupidly.

She's not doing anything, just sitting there, but it's like a burner being turned back up, all that subsided feeling starting to simmer again.

"You could have my body," Shitty confesses. "I mean, not like this - I would swap you, if we could. I'm done with hockey, I could be a great lawyer as a little Vietnamese chick."

Lardo puts her hand right on his dick. "You wouldn't miss anything?"

He goes from half to fully hard against her palm. "Uhhh," he says. "There would be... compensations?" He lifts his hands, but can't quite bring himself to connect.

Lardo does it for him, grabbing his wrists and pulling them to her chest. Fuck, his hands look huge on her; he can almost imagine what it would be like, to be watching those hands touch him. He thumbs at her nipples through her tank top; she hisses in a breath.

Shitty never would have thought he would take his hands off her tits, if he was allowed to put them there, but that's what he does, because her upper arms are right there too.

"I'm super into your biceps," he says, and bends his head so he can lick a stripe from her elbow to her shoulder. She shivers.

"Tickles?" Shitty asks self-consciously. "Sorry, mustache, I, uh - "

"Let's try it everywhere," Lardo says in his ear.

*

Things get kind of hot and blurry for awhile. There's a point when Shitty's wrestling off her underpants when he thinks to ask about the moon cup situation - not because he's squicked, he says insistently, while she laughs at him, but isn't it polite to ask?

"Find out," she dares him, and stops laughing when he slides two fingers inside of her. She's tight and slick and obstruction-free.

"F-finished last night," she says, and grinds onto his hand.

She gets off like that, clenching around his fingers, working her own clit while he mouths at her nipples, and then gets him off with her hands, kissing him while he groans.

Shitty pulls her to him as soon as he's wiped himself off; he feels amazing, wrung out and happy, and he just wants to lie here forever with her head on his chest and her leg thrown over his.

But, "wait," he says, because his brain _never shuts up_. "Is this too... girlfriendy?"

Lardo sighs.

"It's more I get impatient with expectations?" she says. "I mean, not you guys, but - girls have drama. And I hate PDA, and this is okay right now, but I couldn't sleep like this, I like my own bed."

"I object strenuously," Shitty starts, "Like anyone could ever have more drama than our very own - " and Lardo puts her hand over his mouth.

"You can't police my dysphoria," she says seriously. "I mean, I'm still figuring shit out, okay? Sometimes I'm just pissed off about the bullshit that goes with my chromosomes, and sometimes I hate being always already _seen_ as a girl, and sometimes - really I just wish the whole thing would go away, but girl is the half they stuck me in, you know? So sometimes I hate that half more."

"That's fair," Shitty says. "They had, uh, these 'smash the binary' shirts at that bookstore, I almost got you one - wait, are gifts too girlfriendy?"

"You really want to be dating me," Lardo says flatly.

"I'm trying to not be an asshole about you touching my dick," Shitty says. "Only it's hard for me to not add up sex and love and get romance."

"I don't mind _romance_ ," Lardo says, making a weird face. "Do I? What the fuck is romance."

"Uh, you're the one with the girlfriends," Shitty dodges.

Lardo makes a dismissive gesture.

"This was the closest I've come to the kind of sex I want to have," she says, peeling herself away from Shitty's side. She leans down and kisses him on the nose and left eyelid. "I didn't feel invisible. So, thanks."

"So many questions," Shitty starts, but she's already grabbing her stuff for the shower.

*

Bitty's fucking _sashaying_. Shitty can't even.

*

Okay, no, he can: Jack is delightfully pink and Shitty is so so so happy for them.

He's smiling to himself like a fool every time he looks at Lardo, too - it's half the high of she-touched-my-dick and half the high of real honest raw conversation. He feels naked and seen in all the best ways.

*

From the singalong playlist that morning: "I'm Yours", "Starships," that Shrek cover of "I'm a Believer," "Brown Eyed Girl". (Shitty will never get enough of how Jack will sing along to oldies.)

*

"You know," Bitty says. "Just because we've given up on camping, we don't have to give up on _cooking_."

Jack looks up from where he's despairingly inspecting yet another diner menu. "Really?" he asks.

"Yes, honey," Bitty says, patting his hand. He pokes his phone. "Grocery in another five miles, find a park with tables, I could do a chicken breast pasta salad in... thirty minutes?"

Jack throws the menu down on the table and stands up. "My hero," he says, and looks at Bitty like he's not at all kidding, like Bitty's offering to do miracles for him.

*

Shitty challenges Jack to Hangman while Bitty cooks and gets as far as SO _HO _OTTO_ED? before Jack grabs the pen out of his hand, throws it at him, and stalks off to do calisthenics.

Lardo hangs Shitty with _O__ _O_, though, confusing Shitty by making him think it's one word, so Jack is revenged. Then Bitty gets a look at the paper while he's serving out dinner and smirks at Shitty until _Shitty_ blushes, so, yeah. Definitely did not come out victorious in that skirmish.

(He loves it.)

*

"So," Shitty says that night, trying to sound all casual, like he hasn't been desperately wondering since around noon whether they're going to have sex again.

"Bro," Lardo says back.

" _Best_ bro," Shitty says, immediately giving up on casual, because, fuck, who needs casual. He flings himself across the bed where Lardo's set down her bag. "Would you like to tell me everything about the sex you'd like to have?"

"Maybe it's not with you," Lardo says, and Shitty claps his hand to his heart. 

"Compersion in my perversion, did we not establish this. Wait, that was backwards."

Lardo puts her hand on his chest and leans to where she can look him in the eye. "Really?"

"Okay, also mad jealousy," Shitty admits, "But I have practice coping. You told me as soon as we got to know each other your forever girl was going to be a girl, you know?"

"I did not say that," Lardo says. Shitty grabs her hand where it's digging into his sternum.

"I've been thinking about romance, if you want to warm up to sex," he says encouragingly. "Performativity versus subjectivity. Limerence versus Ferris wheels and waterfalls and shit."

"Hmm," she says. She climbs onto the bed and straddles his hips, letting up on his chest. His dick is a lot happier about the pressure than his sternum. "I want option A," she says. "Option B?"

"The sex option," Shitty says, squirming happily underneath her. "Yes, good."

"I like kissing girls against walls," Lardo tells him. "I like boxing them in." She puts her hands on the bed, on either side of Shitty's head. "I couldn't kiss you against a wall," she says, bending down close to his mouth, "Without, like, stilts."

"Stilts are not sexy," Shitty agrees. "I have pretty good quads, though, I could be half a foot shorter against a wall for awhile."

"Yeah?" Lardo asks. She's still not kissing him.

"You'd feel my thighs shaking," Shitty says, "You'd be between them, you'd have to - "

"Grab your ass and help hold you up," Lardo says. "Hm. I like sweaty men," she adds, "Maybe I wouldn't help that much. Make you work."

"I'd hold you by the waist and use you to pin myself," Shitty says. "So you could keep kissing me longer."

"You just want the grind," Lardo says, rolling her hips.

"Y-you're onto me," Shitty says, lifting up against her.

"What if I wanted to dress you up," she says. "I really like getting my hand under a skirt..."

"I - oh," Shitty says. "Look good in green."

Lardo grins. "What if I wanted to draw you like one of my French girls."

"Um, you have sketched me naked like twenty times," Shitty says, "I was half of your Figure 2 portfolio."

"Sure," Lardo says, "But never touching yourself."

"We could definitely do that," Shitty says in a rush. His hands find the slight curves of her waist and encourage her to keep moving.

She leans in close. "What if I wanted to fuck you with one of _my_ dicks," she asks right in his ear. Shitty has to freeze so he doesn't come in his pants.

"Hell, yes," he says when he finds his voice. "Do you have a - fuck. Please?"

"Are you just going to find a way that, everything I want, I could do it with you?" Lardo asks.

"You're - _you_ keep saying 'you'," Shitty says. She's grinding on him again. "I am, uh. Not - not originating the implication that - um. That we could keep doing this, and, um, fuck, I have a - painful zipper situation actually - "

"Oops," Lardo says, clambering off. Shitty unzips and wiggles out of his lower clothes without even sitting up - fuck, that's a relief.

When he looks back at Lardo, she's naked and fishing around in her bag.

"I'm gonna sit on your dick," she says, holding up a condom. "And I would like to hear your thoughts about vibrators in heterosexual sex acts."

"Very pro," Shitty gets out, " _Fuck_ , do you - here?"

"Sadly no," Lardo says, "Someone didn't give me, a, uh." She rolls the condom onto him. "Full itinerary for this trip."

"I - I - fuuuck," Shitty says, as she sinks down.

"File - under - things that freak dudes out - " Lardo says, and then she's making a face of intense concentration and after that it's all rhythm and squeaking springs and embarrassing groaning noises.

*

"Shitty," Lardo whispers from the other bed. He's almost asleep. A little lonely, if he was going to admit it - sex is amazing but he'd had a nice couple nights of snuggly Bitty and Jack there.

"Hmm?" he answers.

"This trip," she says. "Who, exactly, are you romancing?"

He's too far gone into sleep already for alarm, for anything but easy acceptance of the answer that comes to mind.

*


	6. Picture What Will Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes: potentially transphobic comments regarding bodies and attraction.

*

Shitty is in a fantastic mood the next morning, and it takes him a little while to realize that everyone else isn't.

Bitty is still sort of glowing, but he also keeps reaching out to Jack and then pulling his hand away. Jack looks sad, and Lardo's weirdly shifty. Shitty profoundly hopes she's not having regrets relating to his dick, but he doesn't want to ask in front of Jack and Bitty, and he doesn't want to try to drag her off for a private conversation when Jack is looking sad again.

Shitty gets sad himself when it hits him that this is the middle day of their drive back. Not even counting the whole way out to Seattle, pretty soon they'll have more of it behind them than ahead of them.

Shitty wants to _talk_ about that, about his internship and Lardo's summer job and Jack's plans to go back to Montreal to train for training camp. If he can't stop thinking about the way they're all going their separate ways, he'd at least like to not feel alone with it. But Lardo is not excited about her job and Bitty turns big reproachful eyes on Shitty when he mentions Montreal, and Shitty has to admit he doesn't really have anything to say about his own internship. Bitty tells a couple of good camp stories, that's something.

They've gone from "I'm a Believer" to "Hallelujah" on the Shrek soundtrack, though, that's about the long and short of it.

(Bitty keeps switching playlists; Shitty thinks he's heard "Chandelier" three times by lunch. He makes a private, morbid bet with himself about the odds of either "Irreplaceable" or "Someone Like You" by the Massachusetts state line.)

*

Meanwhile the merciless South Dakota sky forces Shitty to introspection.

He'd planned half of the trip when he thought it would just be himself and Jack, and half once they'd added Bitty.

If he's been romancing anyone with landmarks and National Parks, it isn't Lardo.

*

What the fuck is romance, even.

*

"Coleslaw?" Bitty asks Jack, looking at the limited vegetable selection in the latest little grocery store. "I can use yogurt instead of buttermilk. It'll be better than diner coleslaw."

Jack looks at Bitty like that isn't even a question.

Lardo rounds the corner from the frozen aisle. "Unbreaded tilapia," she says, holding it up.

It's like shopping for the Haus, except Bitty isn't buying six pounds of butter and they don't have to get Holster his gross beef jerky snacks. It's shopping for family dinner, Shitty realizes, and that's not a new thought but it still hits him like it is.

If - somehow. If Jack didn't feel like he had to cut everybody off to play in the NHL, and Shitty survived law school and got a job in Providence, and they had a big house with rooms for everyone and Shitty got to have sex with Lardo and sleep with Bitty when Jack was on the road and maybe Jack sometimes when Bitty was on a late-night baking binge and they could take Bitty to Paris and maybe Lardo would let them tag along to Nepal or wherever she was going next, and they'd have Jack's photos on the walls and some giant incomprehensible thing of Lardo's in the backyard, and, he knows he's getting ridiculous but he isn't going to pretend he's not having some sort of emotional breakdown standing there holding a can of black beans in a four-aisle food mart, Shitty was _coaching their kid's peewee team_ , whosever kid it was specifically - well.

Shitty has maybe been sad for the better part of a year about leaving the Protean freedom of college for the rigid halls of Justice, but fuck Protean freedom, fuck it right in the face, _he wants to be a motherfucking grownup_ if he can be a grownup like _that_.

Which he probably can't. He comes back to himself a little; it's one thing to convince his people they can stand him in a car for a hundred-plus hours and another thing to think they'd want him around forever.

Still, the fact that nobody bailed in Seattle seems like a positive sign. Now all Shitty needs to do is figure out how you convince three people you should all date each other, sell Jack on the idea of maintaining human contact outside of being on a hockey team, figure out why Lardo's being squirrelly and whether she'd feel more or less like a girlfriend with three boyfriends who mostly boyfriended each other, and, oh yeah, crush Bitty's dreams of a white wedding and a picket fence. (Although there's no reason he couldn't, really. Their house would probably have a fence. Jack will probably retire in his late thirties, that's - _terrifyingly_ \- not outside of Shitty's life-planning horizon these days, given when he expects to finish paying off his law school loans, and -)

Also Bitty is tapping his foot expectantly and waiting for the beans.

*

Bitty has the A Teens "Can't Help Falling In Love" cover on his "movie songs of my childhood" playlist. Shitty approves; it's much more the right idea here than "Bad Romance", which was what was playing before Shitty started poking around. Also it turns out Jack has never seen _Lilo & Stitch_, which makes Shitty feel like a bad boyfriend, letting that slide, although technically, he isn't anybody's boyfriend, hasn't been since the 11th grade, and might never be again if he ends up married to the law or whatever.

*

There isn't really a good way to ask three people to join you in mutual romantic/queerplatonic entanglement.

"Did you ever wish you could live at the Haus?" Shitty asks Lardo, during a stretch where Jack was driving.

"Sure, once Bitty took over," Lardo says, and Bitty smiles, pleased.

"Why thank you, Ser Lardo," he says, and she grins back at him.

*

"Your dad must have dated your mom while he was playing," Shitty says to Jack. "I mean, obviously." This a) is out of the blue and b) causes Jack to look at him with a face of betrayal and confusion as to how he has come to be in the car of this backstabbing person.

"Are we talking about dads," Jack says, and, okay, so some of these attempts are going better than others.

*

"I need to talk to you," Lardo says. Shitty hasn't even picked a bed yet but he sets his bag down on the nearest one and pays attention.

"Absolutely," he says. "Is there anything I should do to be prepared for this conversation?"

Lardo makes a face at him.

"You're not going to need a lawyer," she says, "Just - ugh."

She sits down on the edge of the other bed and pulls Shitty to sit with her.

"I meant to talk about this last night," she says, taking his hands, "But I got distracted, but - "

"You got distracted by my dick," Shitty says gleefully. "Sorry," he says, straightening his face. "Carry on."

"We talked about - stuff we might want to do," Lardo says slowly.

"But in a completely non-binding way!" Shitty says. "Seriously, 100% no worries if - "

"Will you shut up for a minute," Lardo says, but squeezes his hands so he knows she's not really angry. "You maybe didn't have the... right context, entirely. I wasn't trying to bait-and-switch - "

"Mmph," Shitty says, ostentatiously keeping his lips together. He shakes his head vigorously. "Mm mm mmm mmph - "

"Don't you claim to be some kind of expert in people coming out to you?" Lardo says. "Oh, yes, Lardo, four other people this week!" She does a fake high voice for him, a sign she's actually irritated now.

Shitty sits, waits.

"I want different pronouns," she says. "I thought for awhile it was just something I wished could be true, but it's - " she rolls her eyes - "more than pretty colors. I don't know yet about trying to tell everyone, but of course I wanted to tell you. But then we got this thing going, and... given the whole you-always-see-me-as-a-girl thing, if part of what makes it hot is that it's a girl talking about fucking you or whatever, then. Enh."

Shitty waits.

"I know I said heterosexual sex acts, specifically, which was misleading..." she flails a little. Shitty blinks at her aggressively. "Oh, you can talk again, asshole."

"Spivak?" Shitty asks. "Or ze? Or, you know, _he_ , or just 'bro' everywhere, and thank you for telling me, I don't feel misled, would this be an appropriate time for congratulatory kissing?"

"Singular they, I think," Lardo says. "But, Shitty, jeez, take a minute to let it sink in."

"Okay," he says softly. Lardo is right, he was being flippant. Mostly relief: pronouns were less scary than some of the things that had gone through his mind there, like "sex with you was a terrible mistake".

He looks at Lardo. Singular-they Lardo, apparently, which is simultaneously new and something that feels like it's been lurking under a lot of bro-jokes for awhile.

"Can I think out loud?" he asks.

"Can you _not_?" Lardo chirps. "Can you think at all?"

"Hardly, around you sometimes," Shitty says sheepishly. They're still holding hands. "I don't feel misled," he says. "Even if you have virulent contagious pronouns and we didn't use the right protection." He grins and Lardo smiles back.

"I know what my boner thinks is like the least important possible thing here," Shitty says, "But we are sitting on a bed talking about last night, so. I think, just for me, my dick cares less about pronouns than bodies. I mean, if I had met you and concluded you were dick-positive, I wouldn't have thought 'oh yeah, I want to drag you back to my cave and stuff babies up there'." He shrugs, because, boners, what can you say. "I like pussy, and I like _your_ pussy, and I've never really thought about nonbinary pussy but I don't see why it wouldn't be, uh. Just as pink."

Lardo winces. "Let's go with bro pussy, nonbinary pussy makes me think it's gonna have three labia or something."

Shitty laughs. "Wow, rule 34," he says. "But, um." He still thinks there's further to go to get this right; Lardo's less tense, now, but still a little tight around the eyes.

"We still need the congratulatory kissing," Shitty suggests, and leans forward, a kiss that's barely grazing. "Let me tell you about this person I know, my bro, my best bro." He brings one of Lardo's hands up to his lips and kisses the back.

"I met them three years ago," he says, turning it over and kissing the palm. "I was talking to Jack with my head up my ass, and walked right into their corner kick. They were cute, and awesome, and it turned out they needed a job and my hockey team needed someone with a fucking clue, it was a perfect match." He sets that hand down in Lardo's lap and gives the other one the same treatment, knuckles and palm. Lardo is looking at him a little wide-eyed, breath caught.

"Did I say they were cute?" Shitty goes on. "They had a ponytail back then and it just keeps getting shorter. The fuzz is my favorite," he says, petting Lardo's head, "But every new cut is my favorite. Back when it was long they let me try to braid it." He rubs his face against the curve of their skull, so his mouth is right by their ear. "I suck at braiding," Shitty whispers, and licks the rim of Lardo's ear.

"This person sounds pretty patient," Lardo says, a bit shakily.

"Inhumanly so," Shitty says. "To put up with me. They'd let me kiss them here," he says, kissing their neck, "and here," kissing their collarbone, "and here," going for the soft spot above their armpit, "and never try to hurry me up."

"That never happened," Lardo says. Their hands have been sitting idle in their lap; now they bring them up to Shitty's face.

"I'm telling this story," Shitty says. "But I could use some help from the audience. Spoiler alert: I've heard there's gonna be bro pussy, and right now," he pokes Lardo's crotch, "All I see is bro shorts."

Lardo starts with their tank and bra, just to be difficult. "Oh, yeah, bro tits," Shitty says, massaging himself through his own shorts. "Take it _off_ for me, entirely gender-free baby."

"I think 'baby' is already gender-free," Lardo says, starting to laugh. "I think I called you that last night."

"You can call me your girly-girl if it gets you off, bro," Shitty says. "But, okay, baby-no-qualifiers-needed, the bottom half, please?" He makes a Vanna White gesture at Lardo's legs.

"How about you?" Lardo asks, undoing their shorts.

"Nah," Shitty says. "See, what I'm going to do," he explains, moving, "Is sit here back against the wall just like this, and then you're going to come sit right here," he pats between his legs, "And I'm going to put my hands all over you, wherever you want, as long as you want, and then, to be frank, I'm going to come in my pants. Good?"

"Mmm," Lardo says, thinking about it. "Raincheck? I wanna brone."

"Twist my arm," Shitty sighs. He ends up on top, which is new and interesting.

"I forgot the end of my story," he says, when he's spent and Lardo is letting themself be crushed for a bit. "My best bro? I really love them."

"They love you too," Lardo says. "Now get the fuck off my pelvis, you weigh a fucking ton." Shitty kisses them happily before he goes.

*

"Hey," he says in the morning. "Pronouns. If I get it right, Jack and Bits will probably notice; if I fuck it up and catch myself, they'll definitely notice. If I'm deliberately wrong, now that you've asked, I feel weird about it but I want to do whatever makes sense for you."

"Obviously I want to tell them," Lardo says, rolling their eyes, "Aren't we all for one and one for all here?"

It's pretty anticlimactic, for Shitty at least, it's probably a bigger deal for Lardo. Jack hugs them; Bitty gets a look of dismay. "Lardo," he says, "You should get a cake, I can't possibly bake you a proper cake out here!" He has to settle for a hug and an IOU; Lardo says they'll hold him to it in the fall.

(Shitty is not going to get jealous over not being there for Lardo's happy-new-pronouns cake. Or, well, he's not going to say anything and tarnish the moment.)

*

Sometimes Shitty looks out the window at Minnesota rolling past them and thinks about the Homestead Act and Laura Ingalls Wilder and the forced relocation of native peoples.

Sometimes he looks out and thinks, _when did Bitty and Jack buy lube? Did one of them already have lube along with them?_

*

It's all well and good to have a dream about a big house in a few years, but Shitty thinks if he's going to get anyone to take this plan seriously he needs a vision for fucking September.

Commuter rail. Skype. They could make it work, if they wanted to.

*

The point where Shitty realizes he needs to stop trying to solve it like a puzzle and just say something: he's been arguing in his head with a Jack who thinks Shitty's saying he wouldn't be _capable_ of a regular two-person relationship, which is not what Shitty believes at all, and then he tunes in to the real world long enough to discover that real-world Jack has been arguing with Lardo and Bitty about the WNHL, a topic of great interest to Shitty, and also significant because for four hockey-obsessed bros they have been avoiding hockey and hockey-adjacent topics to a ludicrous degree. It's downright implausible that they've driven almost five thousand miles without redrafting the entire league, picking one historical game to attend, or amending the rules to allow jetpacks or whatever. (All standard bus trip activities when the trash talk gets repetitive.) So it's weaksauce that Shitty is missing this conversation, and also that he loves people who are so factually and analytically wrong about the CWHL.

*

There isn't really a good way to ask three people to join you in mutual romantic/queerplatonic entanglement, but it turns out when you love them, you do it anyways, awkwardly, badly, even if the words coming out of your mouth make you yourself question the idea and your very sanity. Shitty waits until Bitty has handed out dinner (some kind of no-lettuce salad with tomato, canned tuna, green beans, and olives) and says, "So, I think, given that hockey-robotness aside none of us lack heart or courage and there is nothing in that black bag for us, I think we should all date."

"What?" Jack and Bitty say. Lardo smirks and says "Dibs on king of the forest," because Lardo has had the answer key to certain quirks of Shitty's brain since around the time they started sharing joints. Likewise, Shitty knows Lardo isn't saying yes, they're just saying they're willing to hear Shitty out.

"Do-over," Shitty says, "We should all date, please ignore the irrelevant and incoherent cinematic allusion."

"I'm as confused as a fart in a fan factory," Bitty drawls.

"I don't understand," Jack says to Shitty, then, "You either," to Bitty.

"Tomorrow night," Shitty says, "We get back to the Haus. And the plan is we go our separate ways the next day, and that plan should cower before the vastly superior plan where we go our separate ways in body, but stay together in our hearts, and also our senses of commitment and emotional investment." 

"Friendship bracelets," Lardo says elliptically.

"Thank you, opposing counsel," Shitty says. "Different than friendship because I've been fucking whole-new-worlding you guys, and it turns out that's not a buddies song."

Jack and Bitty exchange confused glances.

"Fuck," Shitty says. "Look, I think we work together. What if it's not just a coincidence of timing that it took until this trip, until we were all four together like this, for any of us to get our shit together with each other."

"You're saying, like, a - four-way romance?" Bitty asks, pointing around in a square. "Are you guys," indicating Shitty and Lardo, "Hitting on - both of us?"

Jack, adorably, puts his arm over Bitty's shoulders. It's quite the possessive gesture for someone who says they absolutely can't have a relationship.

"Yes and no," Shitty says. "More like no, I guess, I don't particularly see sex as being part of this except for particular, um, sub-pairings. Also Lardo and I are currently banging but not dating, so this is as much a proposition from me to them as from me to either of you."

"Lardo," Jack says at that, with instant relief, "What the fuck is he talking about."

"He's asking us out," Lardo says blandly.

"Why," Jack asks.

Lardo tips their head back towards Shitty.

"Because I'm in love with all three of you," Shitty says, and Jack turns rigid.

"DID I USE TOO MUCH MUSTARD," Bitty says loudly, and Shitty accepts the cue to shut up for now and eat his salad.

*

They've got a lot of road left and the days are long, so they're looking at at least another two hours in the car before they stop for the night.

The first ten minutes is uncomfortable silence - Bitty doesn't even bother with music - and Shitty thinks it's going to be a long two hours.

Then Bitty takes a breath and says, "You can't just moosh people together all random-like," and Shitty grins.

"My tiny Southern darling," he says, "Nothing _random_ about it."

"But," Bitty says, "If - if you love someone and it doesn't work out - people aren't a recipe. You can't just say, oh, we need another egg here and fix it."

"But we don't have to fit a certain pie pan either," Shitty says. "Pairing is a default, but there's nothing magic about the number two, technically three is the magic number, but, Noah aside, we don't have to couple in couples if we'd rather make quadruples."

"I like couples," Bitty says in a small voice.

Shitty has shotgun and Bitty is behind him; if they were reversed, Shitty could wrap his arms around the headrest to hug him, but from where they are, Shitty can't do much.

"Of course," Shitty says. "I mean - I know I'm stupid-ideas-guy but I did think about this. Obviously it might not be something you want. But I wanted to ask, at least. I didn't want to not even ask."

"Oh," Bitty says, like he's just made a connection there. "Oh, I - huh."

"Can I ask about you and Lardo?" he says, a few moments later.

Lardo, who's driving, shrugs; Shitty nods.

"... I don't even have a question," Bitty admits after another moment. "I'm happy for you? But confused you're not dating given... well." He's blushing a little; Shitty hopes that, even if he doesn't have much perversion in his compersion, his feelings on his bros banging are more like the way he was sweet about Chowder and Farmer and not ew-my-mom-and-dad-have-sex.

"Lardo is nobody's prize to be won," Shitty says, at the same time as Lardo says "But I'd go for the Shitty plan."

"Really?" Shitty says. "You would?" It's - embarrassing; he's spent a lot of time being the guy who tackle-hugs and yells profanities and not the guy who gets choked up and teary. Not because feelings are bad, but because he likes to make stuff happen. Right just now he is kind of sniffly though.

"I like the person I am with you guys more than the person I am when I'm not," Lardo says. "I don't want to be a girlfriend," ("Disqualified," Shitty interrupts) "But I like the idea of a stable, long-term arrangement, if it worked."

"How would it even work," Jack says, and Shitty yells "AHA!"

Everyone else blinks.

"HA!" Shitty says again. "Listen. _Listen_." His heart is beating fast, because, oh, this is the crux of it now.

" _Here's_ how it works," Shitty says, high on elation and danger, "You have been _shutting Bitty down_ for _weeks_ or _months_ , I don't know, nobody's read me in, but you have been fundamentally, absolutely sure you can't be together without _ever fucking asking yourself what that would actually mean_."

"No," he says, when Jack starts to interrupt. "Seriously, bro, I love you, but can you tell me you've ever thought _anything_ but _it's impossible_?"

"It is impossible," Jack says. "This isn't like Samwell hockey, this is the show. Team first, team last, I can't be any kind of partner to Bitty."

He makes an apologetic face at Bitty, who nods sadly.

"You can't be in a _couple_ ," Shitty emphasizes. "You've decided it wouldn't work. I'm not even trying to argue with that!"

Jack raises his eyebrows skeptically.

"I thought about arguing," Shitty says, "Because I love Bitty and it pisses me off that you would walk away from him. But I concede that you are the expert on your tragic and nobly doomed hockey career relationship obstacle."

He takes a breath. "However," Shitty says, "Even you yourself have to admit that you _don't know_ whether you could leave Bitty in the loving care of the other two-thirds of your loved ones and come back to us in the off-season. You have never thought about that. It is an open question." He stabs his finger at Jack accusingly.

"Huh," Jack says slowly, and that's when they hear the bleep of the pull-over siren and see the flashing lights.

*

"What the fuck is it about this state line," Lardo asks, while the cop is still getting out of the cruiser. Because apparently they'd just crossed into Ohio while Shitty was ranting at Jack.

Lardo turns on the dome light, but the cop still comes up to the window with a giant flashlight.

"Okay, folks," he says, aiming it around at each of them in turn, like he's making sure he gets everyone in the eyes. "I'm going to need to see - " He stops.

There's a weird moment of changing scripts.

"Um," the cop says, in a completely different voice, "Are you Jack Zimmermann?"

Shitty can suddenly see that he's young, probably younger than Jack, and he's making that face that people make for unexpected celebrities.

"I am," Jack says. "I guess - I'm not sure if I can offer to sign something for you - "

"Would you?" the cop says. "Can't wait to see you play with the Falcs, you better lose to Columbus, but I was 16 & Under when you would have gone in the draft, I - wow." He hands Jack his pen and ticket pad.

"Still get on the ice these days?" Jack asks; it's one of his generic signing questions. "And who should I - "

"Tyler," the guy says. "Like Tyler - no, no, I don't skate much any more. I was never - so, uh," he says. "You guys all - "

"My Samwell team," Jack says, suddenly less robotic. "Watch any of the college playoffs?"

The cop shakes his head.

"Some good games," Jack says. "Good teammates."

"That's great," the cop says, "Thanks for this," taking the ticket pad back. "Good luck in Providence!" he says, waving. "Unless you're playing CBJ!" He sort of scuttles back to his cruiser.

"... wow," Lardo says.

*

"So you were claiming I get an off-season," Jack says, deadpan.

"Not from being recognized, obviously," Shitty says. "I get that. But four of us looks more like college buddies than anything salacious. Four of us in a house looks like roommates. Four of us at dinner doesn't look like a date."

"Maybe I want to go on dates without you yapping," Jack says with a scowl.

"HA!" Shitty says. "Also, GREAT! Ten minutes ago, that was impossible."

Jack frowns at him. Bitty, though - Bitty is starting to look at Jack with painful, breaking hope.

Shitty kind of just wants to let that sit, for a bit - he puts his hand on Lardo's thigh, but they shrug it off with a glare at him, so he makes do with just watching them watch the road.

*

"If someone in a, uh, multi-person thing breaks up, do they all break up?" Bitty asks. "I mean, I'm just curious - "

"I don't think we could write a plan in advance," Shitty says. "Is this more like 'Shitty had an affair with Jack's goalie', in which case everyone might have feelings about that, or more like 'Lardo discovers the existence of female athletes and has no more use for us', or who knows."

Lardo takes a hand off the wheel to flip him off.

*

Between potentially life-altering negotiations and getting pulled over, nobody quite realizes how late it is until Jack pokes Shitty and tells him that Bitty is falling asleep.

"Probably because you've been keeping him up," Shitty chirps, and Jack just says "Yeah, probably" with a little smile. They've never been the kind of bros like Ransom and Holster who congratulate each other on their conquests - probably because they were both basically monks their whole time at Samwell - but this definitely calls for a quick between-the-carseats fist bump.

Bitty usually does the work of finding them a motel, via his phone. Shitty decides to try a different approach, pointing out the window and saying "there's one".

The sign claimed they had vacancies, but it turns out to be more like "vacancy", as in, only one room.

"Two double beds," the clerk says, sounding bored. "I can waive the extra occupancy charge."

"We could go somewhere else," Shitty says; he doesn't want to cockblock Jack and Bitty their last night on the road.

"I ain't gettin' back in the car," Bitty pouts. He's leaning on Lardo, who's wincing and flexing their knee.

"I think I drove too long," they say. "Let's just stay, I don't mind sharing for one night. Maybe Bits and I can be married midgets again."

"My lord that tent was small," Bitty mumbles.

There's an interesting alternate history where Lardo didn't come along and Bitty used the excuse of the bad smell to squish in with Jack despite Shitty's tent being larger; Shitty wonders whether they still would have ended up banging, in that universe. Some plausibly-deniable tent-induced frottage getting out of hand, maybe; Shitty, overhearing, turned on but also lonely, alone in his own tent.

In this world, Jack has his own bag, Bitty's bag, and Bitty by the elbow, patiently towing him down the vaguely floral-cleaning-product-scented hall.

They get in and fumble around with lights; Bitty curls up on the nearest bed.

Shitty strips off his shirt before Lardo even gets the door closed; fuck, he's getting sick of traveling, he's been wearing clothes all the time for, like, two weeks straight.

Bitty looks up at him curiously. "If we were all dating, would we be having an orgy now?"

Shitty, elite collegiate athlete that he recently was, actually trips over his own feet. It's like hearing Bitty say 'twink', there are words he just doesn't expect to come out of that sweet mouth.

"Nah," he says, once he steadies himself, "I'm telling you, Bits, I want Jack in the loop so I can get your pies _without_ having to suck your dick." He's rounding down a little - there are circumstances where he can imagine - but that's not relevant right now.

Jack makes a priceless face, half offended on Bitty's behalf and half smug.

"But I make you pies anyways," Bitty says, like this is obviously more important than the part about his dick. "We don't have to be dating."

"I want extra love in them," Shitty says. "Look." He sits down next to Bitty and runs his fingers through his hair. "You make me pies anyways, and Lardo gets my dick anyways, and Jack will listen to my bullshit anyways, it's not _for_ any of that. If we did it, if we tried it, it would be for the same reasons anyone dates."

Bitty frowns.

"Because we want to, Bits. Only that. Because we'd rather be together than not."

Shitty leans over and kisses him on the temple. "It's okay if you don't," he says. "You can still make me pies, even."

"Gotta make Lardo a cake," Bitty says sleepily, and Shitty leaves it to Jack to get him out of his shoes and shorts and manhandle him under the covers.

Lardo has moved the pillows on the other bed so they're each as close to the edge as they can get without falling off; they take the far side, leaving Shitty on the side near Jack and Bitty's bed.

The curtains are thin and there's a parking lot light pole right outside their window. Shitty's on his side, back to Lardo to try to give them space, so he has a clear view of Jack and Bitty in the light filtering in. The way Jack fits himself in behind Bitty, the way he's wrapped his arm around him and spread out his hand on his stomach.

Bitty's bonelessly asleep and even snoring a little, but Shitty realizes after a moment that Jack's eyes are open, looking back at him over Bitty's head across the gap between the beds.

Shitty really doesn't believe it's possible to speak with your eyes, that's what fucking words are for, but he finds himself hoping that Jack is reading the right things in his: how beautiful Shitty thinks he is with Bitty, how lucky Shitty feels to get to see them like this, how much he doesn't want it to be the last time.

*

Shitty wakes up to Lardo pushing at him, he's rolled over at some point in the night and glomped onto them and they've apparently woken up enough to want to sleep a little longer unmolested. Bitty, at the foot of the bed on his way to or from the bathroom, is looking down at the two of them with a little frown.

*

"Are you going to total up what we've cost you?" Shitty asks, when Jack pays at the desk.

"No," Jack says. "Or, yes, I guess, for budget tracking reasons. But don't say you cost me, like I'm the one being generous." Shitty's breath catches, but Jack turns away to carry bags.

*

"I'm not _out_ of music," Bitty says indignantly, "I'd just rather play the songs I like than ones I don't."

"Sure," Lardo says, commandeering the audio cable. "But now, we're taking a variety break."

Lardo's idea of variety turns out to be all of Vienna Teng's _Aims_ \- Lardo has old-fashioned notions about songs coming in albums - but that's okay. Shitty's definitely putting "Never Look Away" on his imaginary this-was-our-road-trip mix.

(Shitty's pretty sure "Never Look Away" wasn't the point, and it wasn't aimed at him, but hey, serendipity.)

*

"I really liked Cedar Point," Bitty says. They're about an hour past Sandusky by then.

"Good," Shitty says.

"I really liked the whole trip," Bitty says.

"That's what it's all about," Shitty says. "That or the hokey pokey."

*

"But," Bitty says, in the corner of Pennsylvania. "I love y'all, but there's love and there's love, and it's not a competition, but sometimes you know in your heart that - "

"Bitty," Shitty interrupts, before he can get himself any more wound up.

"Jack would always come first for me," Bitty says, sighing. "And - obviously I don't want to presume, but, if, I would _want_ to, also, with - "

"Yes," Jack says simply, and Bitty is derailed for a moment while they fall into each other's eyes. Shitty has to tear his own gaze away from the rearview and back to the fucking road.

"It just doesn't seem fair," Bitty picks up again, a minute later, "If Jack and I have each other and you feel that way about Lardo and - it's _really_ none of my business, except it's like you're saying it _is_ , it would be, and - "

"Bro," Lardo says. "Shitty's my favorite, okay?"

"But - " Bitty says.

"I take his heart as seriously as you do Jack's," Lardo says, and, fuck, Lardo can't just say shit like that, Shitty has to _drive_ here.

(Later, Lardo will say that's when they first really believed it could work, when Bitty was worried Shitty might not get enough love.)

*

"What on earth would we tell our parents," Bitty asks rhetorically.

"Are you telling them about the bear?" Shitty asks.

Jack looks up, dismayed. "We're not telling people about the bear?"

*

"How can you not know what the Falconers goal song is."

"I've heard it," Jack says, "It's like - dah dah, dah dah dah, dah dah. I just don't know what it is."

"Stipulated that we could answer this question by looking it up," Shitty says, "What _should_ it be, if you could pick anything."

"'Get Me Bodied'," Bitty says immediately. "Cut in from the 'whoo', and the whole arena gets to go 'hey hey hey' right off."

"Why am I not surprised," Lardo says.

"... you know, that's not terrible?" Jack says thoughtfully.

*

Eastern New York is ECAC road trip territory; maybe it's not surprising they end up reminiscing.

It starts with road trip memories - remember the time the hornet flew in the bus window, remember the time it hailed and we had to pull over and it sounded like a machine gun on the roof.

It turns pretty quickly into actual hockey. The time Jack scored forty seconds into the first period; the time he scored twenty seconds from the end of the third. Shitty's first goal, his favorite goal, the time he ended up in the net. Jack's favorite play he wasn't on the ice for, when Rans and Holster pulled off some crazy no-look telepathy.

Jack's hat trick that got them into the playoffs. Shitty's playoff goal this year. Bitty joins in on some of it, the assist in his first game, his first goal, but he refuses to pick a favorite game or a favorite goal.

"I have two more years," he says airily, "I like to think my best game hasn't happened yet."

Shitty and Jack give him a two-way fist bump for that.

Shitty's NCAA career wasn't anything special on paper - his stats, honestly, have always been on the mediocre side of average. He's always known that the team's success has had a lot more to do with Jack "up for the Hobey Baker" Zimmermann, Rans and Holster's defensive dominance, even Bitty's speed and finesse, than anything he's personally brought to the ice.

"But it was _fucking awesome_ ," he concludes at dinner, when there's nothing more to say about anyone's sophomore slump or junior rejuvenation, when the conversation is maybe starting to circle closer to "we'll never play again together" territory, which is a spiral he really doesn't need to see Jack and Bitty go down again. "It was fucking amazing, and there's always shinny."

They toast to that with their cokes.

*

And then they're in Massachusetts, driving through the E-ZPass lane onto the Pike, past signs and service plazas they all know by heart.

It should be even more of a timer-counting-down situation than Seattle, Shitty thinks, but he doesn't feel that same jitteriness, the same unwillingness to be done yet. It's not that there isn't plenty of unfinished business in the car, Shitty just feels - hopefully not jinxing anything - able to deal with it.

"That night at the beach," Bitty says, because apparently he's getting the Shitty's brain Cliff's Notes now too. "I don't really know how to explain it. You know how your ears go deaf after a loud concert, I think with the bear, and then Jack - sorry honey - everything was sort of muffled. But in a good way!" he adds quickly. "Everything was quiet, and simple, and there we were on the edge of the world, and I was so glad I was there with all y'all. I guess that's the one thing that makes me think you're not just right out of your mind."

"Out of my mind and into your heart!" Shitty says brightly.

"I don't know about that," Bitty says, but he says it fondly.

(Bitty will one day admit to Shitty that he didn't really feel it then, that he would have gone along with anything that might have given him a chance to hold on to Jack. That it was only later, walking in on Jack talking quietly with his head in Lardo's lap, that he started to get it for real.)

*

"I'm sorry, The Doors' 'The End' is just a better end of everything song than 'It's the End of the World as We Know It'," Shitty says.

"Well, I can't get either to download," Bitty says. "So I guess we'll have to take your word for it."

*

" - a small piece, tabletop, just a flat plane of glass with things protruding above and below," Lardo is trying to explain. "Not a representational map, but, like, the emotional progression. Bolts and twists of wire and maybe some fabrics, and then the edge of the glass is the ocean."

"But you have to put the bear in though," Jack says. "Canadian Monopoly has one, I used to take it if I couldn't be the hockey player."

"Hm," Lardo says. "Metal, machined - that's not bad, Jack."

*

"So I - hey, Bitty, can you turn this down?"

"You can use the volume control," Bitty says, but does.

"I don't want to mess up your - thing," Jack says, meaning, Shitty supposes, the audio cable and mysterious modern music technology beyond it.

"Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Bitty asks after a moment. "Or did you just want it quieter for driving?"

"Shitty," Jack says. "You said something about a house."

Shitty almost doesn't know what he's talking about for a minute, thinks maybe he means the Haus.

"With the four of us," Jack says. "I want that," he says. "If we could really - I want that."

"Stop the fucking car," Shitty says.

"What?"

"Pull over, motherfucker, you pull this car over now, Jack Zimmermann."

Jack signals and merges and signals and crosses the rumble strip and slows to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. "Shitty, what - "

Shitty is sitting behind Bitty; he's out of the car and around the back and opening the front door as soon as they've stopped.

"Really," he asks Jack, leaning in with his hand on the back of the seat, kneeling down with one knee on the door frame. "Really? Really really?"

"I - yes," Jack says, and Shitty leans the rest of the way in and gets his arms around him. Jack is still wearing his seatbelt, it's horribly awkward, there's traffic whizzing by like a foot behind Shitty's back, but it's as perfect as the bottom of Niagara Falls or the top of the Space Needle. Shitty buries his face in Jack's neck and squeezes his eyes shut and _clings_.

"You told me we tell our own stories," Jack says in his ear. "Way back at that first party. I'd never - you weren't saying it to blame me," he says, "You made it sound good. I want that," he says. "I want that with you. With all of you."

" _Jack_ ," Shitty says. It's like a no-look pass from himself that took four years to connect, a miracle twenty seconds from the end of the game.

"Alright, 'scuse me," Bitty says, tapping on Jack's shoulder. "If we're pledging our love here, I'm next in line."

"You're first in line," Shitty says, disentangling himself and giving the side of Jack's head a little push in Bitty's direction. "I'm just jumping the queue."

Jack kisses Bitty like the end of a movie, hands clutching each other's heads and shoulders, devouring each other like they don't care at all that Shitty's looking in the door and Lardo's in the back seat.

"I'm so sorry," Jack breaks away to say. "I'm so sorry I made you think I could walk away from you."

"Just _don't_ ," Bitty says, "You're _mine_. Um, ours, I guess," and Jack is kissing him again.

"So, hey," Lardo says, as Shitty closes Jack's door and comes around and climbs back in his own. Bitty's still kissing Jack in the front, one hand clutching his shirt. "I guess they're ours now?"

"That sounds responsible," Shitty says. "I think _we_ should be _theirs_. Like house pets."

"You're the golden retriever, I'm the Siamese," Lardo says.

"Bro, please," Shitty says, "I'm, like, a german shepherd."

"You're a yorkie with delusions of grandeur," Lardo says. "Yap, yap, yap."

"Well, you're a... turtle," Shitty says. Lardo shrugs, like, fair enough. Shitty leans over to kiss them, since that's apparently what time it is, just once, like the seal of a promise.

"Do you think we should break them up?" Shitty asks, glancing back at the front. Bitty's out of his seatbelt and has his knee up on the gearshift; Jack's hands are up his shirt.

"Did we not just drive six thousand miles to get them together," Lardo asks deadpan.

"I mean - " Shitty says. "If we can make it back to the Haus, we could screw in a less uncomfortable place than the backseat of a Volvo."

"Maybe a _different_ uncomfortable place," Lardo says, waggling their eyebrows. "Hey, front seat! We can Chinese fire drill if you can't get your lips apart, but somebody needs to drive this wagon back to the barn."

"I can drive," Jack says, turning enough away from Bitty to look into the back. Bitty, undeterred, latches onto his ear. Jack's pupils are blown and even in the yellowish sodium light his lips look dark and swollen. He's biting the bottom one.

"Yeeeah," Shitty says, "No. I hate to say this, but you're taking shotgun and we're putting the midgets in the back, I want to get us _home_."

(When Jack tells the story, Shitty's the one who takes four years to figure out they're something a little different than straight-up bros. What the fuck ever, Jack Zimmermann.)

*

The Haus isn't really home, not any more. Shitty's stuff is packed and mostly at his mom's place already; Nursey's boxes are in his old room. But it's a place shaped like an echo of their someday home, the one where Bitty rules the kitchen and Lardo controls the remote, the one Jack can come back to when hockey doesn't need him. The Haus is where Bitty can take Jack back to his room, for one night in the bed where Jack thought he would never be, and Shitty and Lardo can spread out Jack and Bitty's sleeping bags on Shitty's old floor and make a nest next to the bed where Lardo spent a zillion hours hanging out but never slept.

"Is it not buddies if we get spooge on these," Lardo wonders.

Shitty waves his hand. "Jack can afford the dry cleaning," he says, "And I can't get it on on baby Lardo's Batman bag, that's just wrong."

"I guess he'll still room with a teammate this first year," Lardo says, thinking out loud, "But I'd like us to find a place next year when I graduate, even if it's just a rental for now."

"Are we doing logistics now?" Shitty asks. "I thought someone said something about spooge."

"Sorry-not-sorry," Lardo says, "You know my management skills do it for you." 

"Oh, _yes_ ," someone who is neither of them says. "Like that, oh."

It turns out the Haus has significantly thinner walls than your average roadside motel. Maybe it's just as well they all spent all that time at Samwell not getting laid.

"Oh, oh, oh," says a high voice, and, lower, "Oh. Ohhh."

Shitty and Lardo look at each other, and then they're smirking and giggling.

"Oh, oh," Shitty says dryly in Lardo's ear.

"Oh," they say back, getting a hand right on Shitty's dick, and suddenly it's not funny any more.

"I want my tongue in you," Shitty whispers, "Can we - " and Lardo is rapidly shedding clothes, which points to yes. They go for Shitty's nipples when he gets his own clothes off - ah, naked in the Haus, it's nostalgic already. Shitty returns the favor and kisses down their stomach.

"Can I say you're mine?" he asks, figuring out how to arrange his shoulders and Lardo's thighs. Lardo's all spread out and pink and beautifully bilateral. "I want to keep you, I want to own you, I know that's wrong..."

Lardo tightens their grip in his hair. "Kinky," they say. "I guess we can try it? You're mine right now, show me."

"My own," Shitty says carefully, holding on, trying it out. "Lardo..." He licks in and they tremble.

*

Shitty wakes up alone, in Jack's sleeping bag. Bitty's is empty up on the mattress where Lardo had sensibly migrated.

He finds them in the kitchen, where Bitty is turning the dregs of the trip groceries into magic. Lardo's got their head bent together with Jack and they're inspecting a Google calendar on his laptop.

"Mornin'," Shitty greets them, and ambles over to kiss Lardo, and, why not, Jack, he's there. Jack swats him on the back of the head but looks secretly pleased, Shitty thinks. He sits down at the table across from them and realizes Bitty is staring at him, eyebrows raised.

"I'm just cooking here," he says.

"Aww," Shitty says, "I didn't mean to leave you out, pumpkin," and Bitty turns pink but _actually comes over_ so that Shitty can give him the same peck on the lips he gave Jack.

"I can't believe I'm going to be in Cambridge for _three years_ ," Shitty says, contemplating the miracle of this kitchen and the three of them. "Who the fuck wants to go to Harvard, can't we just go be - naked on a farm somewhere."

"No," Jack says, "Earn your degree," in exactly the same voice Shitty recalls from "eat more protein".

"We are going to have the best summers!" Bitty says cheerfully, just a little bit forced. "Jack _and_ Lardo said so, so I reckon it's true."

"What time is your flight," Shitty says. He'll be morose if he wants to, dammit.

"Close enough to Jack's you can take us together," Bitty answers. "Muffins?"

*

They decide to say goodbye at the Haus, because Jack and Bitty are at different terminals and Jack doesn't want to kiss anyone in public and, well, basically, if Shitty's going to cry, he doesn't want to be doing it when he has to merge with a bunch of aggressive cabbies.

Jack shows them all how to Quebecois cheek kiss, so they go around and do a couple rounds of that, and then Shitty decides he'd rather kiss Jack and Bitty on the lips again, more a press than a smack this time, and then it turns out Lardo has in fact kissed both Jack and Bitty before.

"It was lipgloss-application related," Bitty tells Jack, like Jack is going to object. Shitty's more curious about Lardo and Jack; they promise they'll tell him and Bitty the whole story on four-way Skype. It's something small to look forward to.

Shitty's mostly just amused he's apparently the last one to the party.

Anyways, Shitty doesn't cry, but only because he's too busy watching Lardo kiss Jack and Bitty, and then Bitty gives Jack some truly terrible line about is that the only way French people kiss and Jack actually dips him into a prolonged tongue kiss that Shitty feels like he should either photograph or score.

"5.5 from the Russian judge," Lardo murmurs, so Shitty slips them a little tongue of their own.

*

The highway south of Boston is a mysterious parking lot, but the Ted Williams tunnel is clear and moving, so the drive isn't so bad. It's a little weird to be back in the car again with different luggage in the back and Jack and Bitty dressed respectably for flying.

"See you later," they say at each terminal; "see you later" and "talk to you soon".

Shitty feels his pocket buzz with a text before he's even back to the tunnel.

*

Lardo's parents are nowhere near the airport; Lardo had offered to take the train and Shitty had put them in a headlock until they stopped being dumb.

"Want to come in and say hi to my parents?" Lardo asks.

Shitty is wearing cutoffs with a hole in the inseam and a Miller Lite tank top someone left at a kegster. Not really interview clothes.

"If you want?" he says.

"Fuck, no," Lardo says. "Just wanted to see you make that face. Gonna introduce Bitty to yours?"

"He's definitely the trophy wife," Shitty says, thinking about it. "Maybe Christmas, let's see what he thinks. Will you beard for Jack?"

Lardo sighs. "If shit goes down and he needs me to. I, uh, offered once, a long time ago. It sounded funnier back then."

"Really," Shitty says. "Was this related to the kissing incident?"

"We're telling you about that on Skype, stop boundary-testing," Lardo says.

"Maybe someday," Shitty agrees. "I guess it's not really bearding exactly."

"The part where I wear a dress would be," Lardo says darkly. "The part where Deadspin calls me his girlfriend."

"Not today's problem!" Shitty says. "Sorry to bring it up, bro."

"Enh," Lardo says. "I brought up parents."

"Are you stalling?" Shitty asks.

"A little," Lardo says. "Okay. See you later?"

"Talk to you soon," Shitty says.

*

He goes back to the Haus, to get his own trip stuff and the camping gear and the last of his boxes from his room, and put the dishes they washed that morning back into the cupboards and make sure they turned off all the lights and cleaned out the fridge and took out the trash. (They did.)

Bitty's new jars of jam and fruit butter and preserves are lined up in the kitchen for fall baking. There's nothing of Shitty's left in Nursey's room.

Bitty's room is tidy and ready for him to come back to. It's where Shitty will stay when he visits, he supposes.

He draws a heart on a post-it note and leaves it on Bitty's desk. He locks the front door for the last time. He'll mail Nursey his keys.

"Bye, Samwell," he says, and keeps his eyes off the rearview mirror and on the road in front of him. It's easier than he thought it would be.

*  
*  
*  
*

"I 100% believe we tell our own stories," Shitty says. "We are inextricably enmeshed in the gears of the world but we don't have to be crushed by them." Lardo had done a sculpture about that, once; one of their first major sales. "We are partnered with the limitations of our bodies," like Jack's poor knee, "And the limitations of our souls. But in that space, however small, we dance."

The wide eyes of his peewee team stare back at him in unanimous mute incomprehension.

"So we're gonna have a great year," Shitty finishes up, clapping, "Let's get out there and hit some pucks!"

They scramble for the ice. Only a few of them look back nervously over their shoulders at him. Whatever, Shitty thinks; it's going to sound great at the wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to everyone who read this thing to the end. Fandom kind of amazes me when I think about it, that I can sit here on my couch and indulge my feeeeelings about these guys at great length and put it out there and someone else will take the time to read it because they have feeeelings too. I feel really lucky to be here with all of you. And all thanks and credit in the world to Ngozi for creating these delightful goobers and starting this whole feeeelings thing in the first place.
> 
> ETA: I also want to say that I love critical feedback, and if I got one of the locations all wrong, or handled the nonbinarity badly, or... *whatever*, anything from minor factual inaccuracies to "I really did not get this whole plot arc", I would view it as a gift if you took the time to tell me. Among other things, I'm probably not done writing in this fandom, and I'm sure there are a lot of little things that I could do even better the next time around. (How the hell do young people interact with their music these days, is it on phones or iPods or something else? If they're driving in early June, are the Blackhawks plausibly out of the playoffs by then? *Would* Jack's camera have a flash? (I spent a while on that one.))

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Exeunt, Pursued By Heteronormativity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592341) by [annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annapods/pseuds/annapods)
  * [Exeunt, Pursued By Heteronormativity [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7770145) by [codeswitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codeswitch/pseuds/codeswitch)




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